braced his knees, weeping bitterly, calling herself
the blackest of criminals, worthy a thousand deaths. She implored him
to end her life on the spot. Moritz repulsed her with the deepest
abhorrence, and rushed away from the house."

"Yes," said Moritz, "when I saw Marguerite at my feet, all the torments
of that terrible condition in which I had been at the Chevalier's came
back upon me, goading me into a state of fury such as I had never known
before. I could scarcely help running my sword through her heart; but I
succeeded in mastering myself, and I made my escape after a mighty
effort."

"I lifted Marguerite up from the floor," Dagobert continued, "and
helped her to her room. I succeeded in calming her, and heard her tell
me, in broken sentences, exactly what I had expected and anticipated.
She gave me a letter from the Count, which had reached her the previous
midnight. I have it here."

He produced it, and read it as follows:--

"Fly, Marguerite! All is lost! The detested one is coming quickly. All
my science, knowledge, and skill are of no avail to me as against the
dark fate and destiny about to overtake me at the very culminating
point of my career.

"Marguerite, I have initiated you into mysteries which would have
annihilated any ordinary woman had she endeavoured to comprehend them.
But you, with your exceptional mental powers, and firm, strong will and
resolution, have been a worthy pupil to the deeply experienced master.
Your help has been most precious to me. It was through you that I
controlled Angelica's mind, and all her inner being. And, to reward
you, it was my desire to prepare for you the bliss of your life,
according to the manner in which your heart conceived it; and I dared
to enter within circles the most mysterious, the most perilous. I
undertook operations which often terrified even myself. In vain. Fly,
or your destruction is certain. Until the supreme moment comes I shall
battle bravely on against the hostile powers. But I know well that that
supreme moment brings to me instant death. But I will die all alone.
When the supreme moment comes I shall go to that mysterious tree, under
whose shadow I have so often spoken to you of the wondrous secrets
which were known to me, and at my command.

"Marguerite, keep aloof from those secrets for evermore. Nature,
terrible mother, angry when her precocious children prematurely pry
into her secrets and pluck at the veil which covers her mysteries,