dear; I read English newspapers simply to
see his name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in the House of
Lords."

"So you know English."

"Did I not tell you?--Yes, I learned."

"Poor little one!" cried Louisa, grasping Julie's hand in hers. "How can
you still live?"

"That is the secret," said the Marquise, with an involuntary gesture
almost childlike in its simplicity. "Listen, I take laudanum. That
duchess in London suggested the idea; you know the story, Maturin made
use of it in one of his novels. My drops are very weak, but I sleep; I
am only awake for seven hours in the day, and those house I spend with
my child."

Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend's misery was
opening out before her for the first time, and she dared not look into
her face.

"Keep my secret, Louisa," said Julie, after a moment's silence.

Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the Marquise.

"Ah!" she cried, and her face grew white.

"I need not ask from whom it comes," said Mme. de Wimphen, but the
Marquise was reading the letter, and heeded nothing else.

Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feeling wrought to the
highest pitch, ecstasy of the most dangerous kind painted on Julie's
face in swift changing white and red. At length Julie flung the sheet
into the fire.

"It burns like fire," she said. "Oh! my heart beats till I cannot
breathe."

She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes were blazing.

"He did not leave Paris!" she cried.

Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words that followed,
jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful pauses in between. After
every break the deep notes of her voice sank lower and lower. There was
something awful about the last words.

"He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it.--A look, taken by
stealth, every day, helps him to live.--Louisa, you do not know!--He
is dying.--He wants to say good-bye to me. He knows that my husband has
gone away for several days. He will be here in a moment. Oh! I shall
die: I am lost.--Listen, Louisa, stay with me!--_I am afraid!_"

"But my husband knows that I have been dining with you; he is sure to
come for me," said Mme. de Wimphen.

"Well, then, before you go I will send _him_ away. I will play the
executioner for us both. Oh me! he will think that I do not love him any
more--And that letter of his! Dear, I can see those words in letters of
fire."

A carriage