are pining for utterance now?"
"Duke! Duke!"... she exclaim'd,... "for Heaven's sake let me go!
It is late. In the house they will miss me, I know.
We must not be seen here together. The night
Is advancing. I feel overwhelm'd with affright!
It is time to return to my lord."
"To your lord?"
He repeated, with lingering reproach on the word.
"To your lord? do you think he awaits you in truth?
Is he anxiously missing your presence, forsooth?
Return to your lord!... his restraint to renew?
And hinder the glances which are not for you?
No, no!... at this moment his looks seek the face
Of another! another is there in your place!
Another consoles him! another receives
The soft speech which from silence your absence relieves!"

XI.

"You mistake, sir!"... responded a voice, calm, severe,
And sad,. . . "You mistake, sir! that other is here."
Eugene and Matilda both started.
"Lucile!"
With a half-stifled scream, as she felt herself reel
From the place where she stood, cried Matilda.
"Ho, oh!
What! eaves-dropping, madam?"... the Duke cried... "And so
You were listening?"
"Say, rather," she said, "that I heard,
Without wishing to hear it, that infamous word,--
Heard--and therefore reply."
"Belle Comtesse," said the Duke,
With concentrated wrath in the savage rebuke,
Which betray'd that he felt himself baffled... "you know
That your place is not HERE."
"Duke," she answer'd him slow,
"My place is wherever my duty is clear;
And therefore my place, at this moment, is here.
O lady, this morning my place was beside
Your husband, because (as she said this she sigh'd)
I felt that from folly fast growing to crime--
The crime of self-blindness--Heaven yet spared me time
To save for the love of an innocent wife
All that such love deserved in the heart and the life
Of the man to whose heart and whose life you alone
Can with safety confide the pure trust of your own."

She turn'd to Matilda, and lightly laid on her
Her soft quiet hand...
"'Tis, O lady, the honor
Which that