lthough age had
brought wrinkles to his handsome face, and turned his abundant dark hair
gray, it was still easy to recognise in him the original of the
portrait that had so fascinated Isabelle, and whose protection she had
passionately implored in her distress.

It was the princely father of Vallombreuse--the son bearing a different
name, that of a duchy he possessed, until he in his turn should become
the head of the family, and succeed to the title of prince.

At sight of Isabelle, supported by de Sigognac and the tyrant, whose
ghastly pallor made her look like one dead, the aged gentleman raised
his arms towards heaven and groaned.

"Alas! I am too late," said he, "for all the haste I made," and
advancing a few steps he bent over the prostrate girl, and took her
lifeless hand in his. Upon this hand, white, cold and diaphanous, as if
it had been sculptured in alabaster, shone a ring, set with an amethyst
of unusual size. The old nobleman seemed strangely agitated as it
caught his eye. He drew it gently from Isabelle's slender finger, with
a trembling hand signed to one of the torch-bearers to bring his light
nearer, and by it eagerly examined the device cut upon the stone; first
holding it close to the light and then at arm's length; as those whose
eyesight is impaired by age are wont to do. The Baron de Sigognac,
Herode and Lampourde anxiously watched the agitated movements of the
prince, and his change of expression, as he contemplated this jewel,
which he seemed to recognise; and which he turned and twisted between
his fingers, with a pained look in his face, as if some great trouble
had befallen him.

"Where is the Duke of Vallombreuse?" he cried at last, in a voice of
thunder. "Where is that monster in human shape, who is unworthy of my
race?"

He had recognised, without a possibility of doubt, in this ring, the one
bearing a fanciful device, with which he had been accustomed, long ago,
to seal the notes he wrote to Cornelia--Isabelle's mother, and his own
youthful love. How happened it that this ring was on the finger of
the young actress, who had been forcibly and shamefully abducted by
Vallombreuse? From whom could she have received it? These questions were
torturing to him.

"Can it be possible that she is Cornelia's daughter and mine?" said the
prince to himself. "Her profession, her age, her sweet face, in which I
can trace a softened, beautified likeness of her mother's, but which has
a peculiarly