worst social examples, easily led into wrong, not always aware where the
wrong was, letting affections good or bad whisper away her conscience or
blind her reason. Such women are often far more dangerous when induced
to wrong than those who are thoroughly abandoned,--such women are the
accomplices men like the Count of Peschiera most desire to obtain.

"Ah, Giulio," said Beatrice, after a pause, and looking up at him
through her tears, "when you speak to me thus, you know you can do with
me what you will. Fatherless and motherless, whom had my childhood to
love and obey but you?"

"Dear Beatrice," murmured the count, tenderly, and he again kissed her
forehead. "So," he continued, more carelessly,--"so the reconciliation
is effected, and our interests and our hearts re-allied. Now, alas! to
descend to business. You say that you know some one whom you believe
to be acquainted with the lurking-place of my father-in-law--that is to
be!"

"I think so. You remind me that I have an appointment with him this day:
it is near the hour,--I must leave you."

"To learn the secret?--Quick, quick. I have no fear of your success, if
it is by his heart that you lead him!"

"You mistake; on his heart I have no hold. But he has a friend who loves
me, and honourably, and whose cause he pleads. I think here that I have
some means to control or persuade him. If not--ah, he is of a character
that perplexes me in all but his worldly ambition; and how can we
foreigners influence him through THAT?"

"Is he poor, or is he extravagant?"

"Not extravagant, and not positively poor, but dependent."

"Then we have him," said the count, composedly. "If his assistance be
worth buying, we can bid high for it. Sur mon ame, I never yet knew
money fail with any man who was both worldly and dependent. I put him
and myself in your hands."

Thus saying, the count opened the door, and conducted his sister with
formal politeness to her carriage. He then returned, reseated himself,
and mused in silence. As he did so, the muscles of his countenance
relaxed. The levity of the Frenchman fled from his visage, and in his
eye, as it gazed abstractedly into space, there was that steady depth
so remarkable in the old portraits of Florentine diplomatist or Venetian
Oligarch. Thus seen, there was in that face, despite all its
beauty, something that would have awed back even the fond gaze of
love,--something hard, collected, inscrutable, remorseless. But this
c