red. Madame di Negra would see Mr. Hazeldean. Would
he walk upstairs? Frank hastened to obey this summons.

Madame di Negra was in a small room which was fitted up as a boudoir.
Her eyes showed the traces of recent tears, but her face was composed,
and even rigid, in its haughty though mournful expression. Frank,
however, did not pause to notice her countenance, to hear her dignified
salutation. All his timidity was gone. He saw but the woman whom he
loved in distress and humiliation. As the door closed on him, he flung
himself at her feet. He caught at her hand, the skirt of her robe.

"Oh, Madame di Negra!--Beatrice!" he exclaimed, tears in his eyes, and
his voice half-broken by generous emotion; "forgive me, forgive me!
don't see in me a mere acquaintance. By accident I learned, or, rather,
guessed--this--this strange insult to which you are so unworthily
exposed. I am here. Think of me--but as a friend,--the truest friend.
Oh, Beatrice,"--and he bent his head over the hand he held,--"I never
dared say so before, it seems presuming to say it now, but I cannot
help it. I love you,--I love you with my whole heart and soul; to serve
you--if only but to serve you!--I ask nothing else." And a sob went from
his warm, young, foolish heart.

The Italian was deeply moved. Nor was her nature that of the mere sordid
adventuress. So much love and so much confidence! She was not prepared
to betray the one, and entrap the other.

"Rise, rise," she said softly; "I thank you gratefully. But do not
suppose that I--"

"Hush! hush!--you must not refuse me. Hush! don't let your pride speak."

"No, it is not my pride. You exaggerate what is occurring here. You
forget that I have a brother. I have sent for him. He is the only one
I can apply to. Ah, that is his knock! But I shall never, never forget
that I have found one generous noble heart in this hollow world."

Frank would have replied, but he heard the count's voice on the stairs,
and had only time to rise and withdraw to the window, trying hard to
repress his agitation and compose his countenance. Count di Peschiera
entered,--entered as a very personation of the beauty and magnificence
of careless, luxurious, pampered, egotistical wealth,--his surtout,
trimmed with the costliest sables, flung back from his splendid chest.
Amidst the folds of the glossy satin that enveloped his throat gleamed
a turquoise, of such value as a jeweller might have kept for fifty years
before he co