tence
of which he had never even dreamed. Unconsciously he leaned toward her,
but she pressed back against the iron bars, and drew her dress aside as
if shunning a leper. There was no petulance in the motion, but its
significance pricked him, like a dagger point.

"It was the hope of finding you an innocent woman, that must plead my
pardon for what you consider an unwarrantable 'intrusion.' Will you
believe me, if I swear to you, that I have come as a friend?"

"As a friend to me? No. As a friend to General Darrington and his
adopted son Prince? Yes. Oh, Tiberius! Your rosy apples are flavored
like those your forefather offered Agrippina."

"Do you regard me as an unscrupulous, calculating villain, who
pretending kindness, plots treachery? Do you deliberately offer me this
wanton insult?"

His swart face reddened, and the fine lines of his handsome mouth
hardened.

She shrank a few inches closer to the window, and compressed her lips.

"If you were a man, I should swiftly resent the affront you have thrust
upon me, and suitable redress would be peculiarly sweet and welcome;
but you are a defenceless and unfortunate woman, and my hands are tied.
I desire to help you; you repulse me and insult my manhood. I will do
my painful duty, because it is sternly and inexorably my duty; but, I
wish to God, I had never set my eyes on you."

The sudden passionate ring in his voice surprised her, and she looked
searchingly at him, wondering into what pitfall it was intended to lure
her.

"If you had never set your eyes on me? Ah, would to God I had died ten
thousand times before I encountered their evil spell! If you had never
set your eyes on me? I should be now, a happy, hopeful girl, with life
beckoning me like the rosy Syrian plains that smiled on the
desert-weary. The world looked so bright to me that day, when first I
smelled the sweet resinous pines, and dreamed of my work, and all the
glory of the victory, I knew that I should win over poverty and want. I
was so poor in worldly goods, but oh!--Croesus could not have bought my
proud hopes! So rich, so overflowing with high hope! As I think of my
feelings that day, among the primroses and pine cones, it seems a
hundred years ago, and I recall the image of a girl long dead; such a
proud girl; so happy in the beautiful world of the art she loved! Then
some strange awful curse that had lain in wait, ambushed among the
flowers I gathered that last day of my dead existence,