s she laughed as she
spoke the last words.

"But circumstances give the story a quite new application," returned he.

"How so; pray tell me, for pity's sake?"

"In this way, madame--you have touched the axe," said Montriveau,
lowering his voice.

"What an enchanting prophecy!" returned she, smiling with assumed grace.
"And when is my head to fall?"

"I have no wish to see that pretty head of yours cut off. I only fear
some great misfortune for you. If your head were clipped close, would
you feel no regrets for the dainty golden hair that you turn to such
good account?"

"There are those for whom a woman would love to make such a sacrifice;
even if, as often happens, it is for the sake of a man who cannot make
allowances for an outbreak of temper."

"Quite so. Well, and if some wag were to spoil your beauty on a sudden
by some chemical process, and you, who are but eighteen for us, were to
be a hundred years old?"

"Why, the smallpox is our Battle of Waterloo, monsieur," she
interrupted. "After it is over we find out those who love us sincerely."

"Would you not regret the lovely face that?"

"Oh! indeed I should, but less for my own sake than for the sake of
someone else whose delight it might have been. And, after all, if I were
loved, always loved, and truly loved, what would my beauty matter to
me?--What do you say, Clara?"

"It is a dangerous speculation," replied Mme de Serizy.

"Is it permissible to ask His Majesty the King of Sorcerers when I made
the mistake of touching the axe, since I have not been to London as
yet?----"

"_Not so_," he answered in English, with a burst of ironical laughter.

"And when will the punishment begin?"

At this Montriveau coolly took out his watch, and ascertained the hour
with a truly appalling air of conviction.

"A dreadful misfortune will befall you before this day is out."

"I am not a child to be easily frightened, or rather, I am a child
ignorant of danger," said the Duchess. "I shall dance now without fear
on the edge of the precipice."

"I am delighted to know that you have so much strength of character," he
answered, as he watched her go to take her place in a square dance.

But the Duchess, in spite of her apparent contempt for Armand's dark
prophecies, was really frightened. Her late lover's presence weighed
upon her morally and physically with a sense of oppression that scarcely
ceased when he left the ballroom. And yet when she had drawn freer