etter."

"The Marchioness Caldariva? Is she here?"

"To be sure. The prince never travels without her."

"But what motive had she thus to injure herself and, perhaps, prevent
her marriage with the prince?"

"Motive enough for a woman," replied Vajdar,--"jealousy."

"Jealousy!" repeated Blanka, in astonishment.

But one glance at the face confronting her was a sufficient explanation.
That handsome face, smiling with triumph and self-confidence, made her
tingle with wrath and scorn from head to foot. This man, it appeared,
was impudent enough to play the role of suitor to his patron's wife, and
also, at the same time, to pose as the object of a sentimental
attachment on the part of that patron's mistress. And he smiled
complacently the while.

"Sir," resumed the princess, whom that smile so irritated that she
resolved to use her deadly weapon without further delay, "I appreciate
your devotion to my cause, but I cannot deceive you. I must not
encourage hopes that would end only in disappointment. Let this matter
not be referred to again between us."

"But how if it were imposed by the prince as the indispensable condition
of a peaceful settlement of your relations with him?"

"I cannot believe that such is the case," replied Blanka, calmly. "But
however that may be, I cannot bind myself by any promise to you, knowing
as I do that the question of matrimony between us is one that the canons
of the Romish Church forbid us to consider."

"Ah, you have been studying ecclesiastical law, I see,--an error like
that of the sick man that reads medical works. You undoubtedly have in
mind the tenth paragraph, which forbids a son to marry his father's
divorced wife; but you should have read farther, where it is declared
that a marriage pronounced null and void by the clemency of the Pope is
as if it never had been, and thus offers no hindrance to a subsequent
union."

"No," rejoined the princess, "I did not refer to the tenth paragraph.
The paragraph which renders our union impossible is the fourteenth."

The shot was fired, the mark was hit. Like a tiger mortally wounded the
man sprang up and stood leaning on the back of his chair, glaring at
his assailant with a fury that made her draw back in alarm. With what
sort of ammunition had the gun been loaded, that it should inflict so
deadly a wound,--that it should cause such a sudden and complete
transformation of that complacently smiling face?

"Who told you that?" dema