obert, starting up and hurrying to the
arm-chair where they had placed poor Marguerite. Angelica and her
mother were busy besprinkling her and rubbing her forehead with
essences. When Dagobert went up she opened her eyes.

"Keep yourself quiet, my dear child," said Madame von G----; "you are
not very well, but you will soon be better--you will soon be better!"

Marguerite answered in a feeble, hollow voice, "Yes; it will soon be
over. I have taken poison."

Angelica and her mother screamed aloud.

"Thousand devils!" cried the Colonel. "The mad creature! Run for the
doctor! Quick! The first and best that's to be found; bring him here
instantly!"

The servants, Dagobert himself, were setting off in all haste.

"Stop!" cried the Count, who had been sitting very quietly hitherto,
calmly and leisurely emptying a beaker of his favourite wine--the fiery
Syracuse. "If Marguerite has taken poison, there is no need to send for
a doctor, for, in this case, I am the very best doctor that could
possibly be called in. Leave matters to me."

He went to Marguerite, who was lying profoundly insensible, only giving
an occasional convulsive twitch. He bent over her, and was seen to take
a small box out of his pocket, from which he took something between his
fingers, and this he gently rubbed over Marguerite's neck and the
region of her heart. Then coming away from her, he said to the others,
"She has taken opium; but she can be saved by means which I can
employ."

By the Count's directions Marguerite was taken upstairs to her room,
where he remained with her alone. Meanwhile, Madame von G---- had found
the phial which had contained the opium-drops prescribed some time
previously for herself. The unfortunate girl had taken the whole of the
contents of the phial.

"The Count is really a wonderful man," Dagobert said, with a slight
touch of irony. "He divines everything. The moment he saw Marguerite he
knew she had taken poison, and next he knew exactly the name and colour
of it."

In half-an-hour the Count came and assured the company that Marguerite
was out of danger, as far as her life was concerned. With a side-glance
at Moritz, he added that he hoped to remove all cause of mischief from
her mind as well. He desired that a maid should sit up with the
patient, whilst he himself would spend the night in the next room, to
be at hand in case anything fresh should transpire; but he wished to
prepare and strengthen himself for thi