rotection!" cried she, in a voice trembling
with passion. "I know you now."

"Let me speak with you a few words,--the last I shall ever ask,"
muttered he, "and I promise all you dictate."

"Leave me--leave me at once," said she, in a mere whisper. "If you do
not leave me, I will declare aloud who you are."

"Who _we_ are; don't forget yourself," muttered he.

"For that I care not I am ready."

"For mercy's sake, Loo, do not," cried he, as she lifted her hand
towards the strings of her mask. "I will go. You shall never see me
more. I came here to make the one last reparation I owe you, to give you
up your letters, and say good-bye forever."

"That you never did,--never!" cried she, passionately. "You came
because you thought how, in the presence of this crowd, the terror of
exposure would crush my woman's heart, and make me yield to any terms
you pleased."

"If I swear to you by all that I believe is true--"

"You never did believe; your heart rejected belief. When I said I knew
you, I meant it all: I do know you. I know, besides, that when the
scaffold received one criminal, it left another, and a worse, behind.
For many a year you have made my life a hell. I would not care to go on
thus; all your vengeance and all the scorn of the world would be light
compared to what I wake to meet each morning, and close my eyes to, as I
sleep at night."

"Listen to me, Loo, but for one moment. I do not want to justify myself.
You are not more wretched than I am,--utterly, irretrievably wretched!"

"Where are the letters?" said she, in a low whisper.

"They are here,--in Florence."

"What sum will you take for them?"

"They shall be yours unbought, Loo, if you will but hear me.

"I want the letters; tell me their price."

"The price is simply one meeting--one opportunity to clear myself before
you--to show you how for years my heart has clung to you."

"I cannot buy them at this cost. Tell me how much money you will have
for them."

"It is your wish to outrage, to insult me, then?" muttered he, in a
voice thick with passion.

"Now you are natural; now you are yourself; and now I can speak to you.
Tell me your price."

"Your shame!--your open degradation! The spectacle of your exposure
before all Europe, when it shall have been read in every language and
talked of in every city."

"I have looked for that hour for many a year, Paul Hunt, and its arrival
would be mercy, compared with the daily menace of one lik