He wants nothing, and he is _not_ the Baron
Charles Denmore! He comes from far away, across the sea, and he would
not have come here to-night but that you insisted upon it! Take him
away--go away yourself--and never let me see you again unless you have
something to ask or you wish me to do you an injury!'

''But----' began Yon Berg.

''Not another word!' said the sorceress, 'I have said. Go, before you
repent having come at all!'

''Madame,' I began to say, awed out of the feeling at least of equality
which I should have felt to be proper under such circumstances, and only
aware that Adolph, and possibly myself, had incurred the enmity of a
being so near to the supernatural as to be at least dangerous--'Madame,
I hope that you will not think----'

'But here she cut _me_ short, as she had done Von Berg the instant
before.

''Hope nothing, young artist!' she said, her voice perceptibly less
harsh and brusque than it had been when speaking to my companion. 'Hope
nothing and ask nothing until you may have occasion; then come to me.'

''And then?'

''Then I will answer every question you may think proper to put to me.
Stay! you may have occasion to visit me sooner than you suppose, or I
may have occasion to force knowledge upon you that you will not have the
boldness to seek. If so, I shall send for you. Now go, both of you!'

'The dark curtain suddenly fell, and the singular vision faded with the
reflected light which had filled the room. The moment after, I heard the
shuffling feet of the slattern girl coming to show us out of the room,
but, singularly enough, as you will think, not out of the _house_!
Without a word we followed her--Adolph, who knew the customs of the
place, merely slipping a five-franc piece into her hand, and in a moment
more we were out in the street and walking up the Rue Saint Denis. It is
not worth while to detail the conversation which followed between us as
we passed up to the Rue Marie Stuart, I to my lodgings and Adolph to his
own, further on, close to the Rue Vivienne, and not far from the
Boulevard Montmartre. Of course I asked him fifty questions, the replies
to which left me quite as much in the dark as before. He knew, he said,
and hundreds of other persons in Paris knew, the singularity of the
personal appearance of the sorceress, and her apparent power of
divination, but neither he nor they had any knowledge of her origin. He
had been introduced at her house several months befor