roped along the
wall to find the lock of the gallery door. Great God! what was that? A
movement near her, an icy touch on her hand. The White Lady's death-grip!
and yet better that, she thought, than any human being's presence; better
that than for any mortal to have seen her rifling the Duke's bureau. She
sought wildly for the lock. At last she found it and slipped in the key.
As the door sprang open something pushed past her--a huge, black shape.

'Melac!' she called in a strained voice, and the powerful beast came to
her and rubbed his cold nose upon her hand. Only the wolf-hound, then,
who had been sleeping in the darkness behind the arras. She laughed when
she remembered her ghastly fear of the White Lady's death-grip!

She regained her own room. Maria had not returned from Madame de Ruth's
apartment. She kindled a light from her steel tinder-casket and set a
waxen taper aglow. Then she began to read Forstner's letter.

'Monseigneur, my Prince, and once my friend! Though it has been your
pleasure to discredit me, I cannot rest until I have let you know the
truth. You are being grossly abused, your noble trust and love made mock
of by a creature too vile for human words to describe. A woman, who to
her other lovers holds you up to scorn and ridicule! yes, ridicule of
your passion, making mock, betraying the secrets of your bed. Besides, it
is she who has the gulden which you accused me of purloining; she to whom
half your revenues are carried, and you are doled out a paltry sum which,
after all, you spend again upon this creature. You are weary of her, too;
all your Dukedom knows that right well--weary of her, and you dare not
dismiss her! The people laugh: your subjects, your friends, strangers,
other princes, all Europe laughs. See her! observe her hideous faults,
her foul blemishes of mind and body, her filthy actions!' Then followed
the names of his rival lovers, and a list of the vast sums she had
filched from the ducal treasury. All this set forth so cleverly, with
such apparent proof, that she trembled as she read. There were official
business transactions accurately quoted and put in such a light as to
seem to be robberies. It was a dangerous letter for her--half truth, half
falsehood, difficult to unravel, impossible to deny entirely. 'Honour
binds you, you say,' the epistle continued. 'Ah! my Prince! you have a
toy which has turned to a viper in your hand! Throw it from you! Other
princes have done so, an