fe. Let us go to Asia; but
to start, my child, one needs much gold, and to have gold one must set
one's affairs in order."

She understood no part of these ideas.

"Gold! There is a pile of it here--as high as that," she said holding up
her hand.

"It is not mine."

"What does that matter?" she went on; "if we have need of it let us take
it."

"It does not belong to you."

"Belong!" she repeated. "Have you not taken me? When we have taken it,
it will belong to us."

He gave a laugh.

"Poor innocent! You know nothing of the world."

"Nay, but this is what I know," she cried, clasping Henri to her.

At the very moment when De Marsay was forgetting all, and conceiving the
desire to appropriate this creature forever, he received in the midst of
his joy a dagger-thrust, which Paquita, who had lifted him vigorously in
the air, as though to contemplate him, exclaimed: "Oh, Margarita!"

"Margarita!" cried the young man, with a roar; "now I know all that I
still tried to disbelieve."

He leaped upon the cabinet in which the long poniard was kept. Happily
for Paquita and for himself, the cupboard was shut. His fury waxed at
this impediment, but he recovered his tranquillity, went and found his
cravat, and advanced towards her with an air of such ferocious meaning
that, without knowing of what crime she had been guilty, Paquita
understood, none the less, that her life was in question. With one bound
she rushed to the other end of the room to escape the fatal knot which
De Marsay tried to pass round her neck. There was a struggle. On either
side there was an equality of strength, agility, and suppleness. To end
the combat Paquita threw between the legs of her lover a cushion which
made him fall, and profited by the respite which this advantage gave
to her, to push the button of the spring which caused the bell to ring.
Promptly the mulatto arrived. In a second Cristemio leaped on De Marsay
and held him down with one foot on his chest, his heel turned towards
the throat. De Marsay realized that, if he struggled, at a single sign
from Paquita he would be instantly crushed.

"Why did you want to kill me, my beloved?" she said. De Marsay made no
reply.

"In what have I angered you?" she asked. "Speak, let us understand each
other."

Henri maintained the phlegmatic attitude of a strong man who feels
himself vanquished; his countenance, cold, silent, entirely English,
revealed the consciousness of his dignity in a mo