a nervous shudder, as she arose and left the room.

"What a little misanthrope she has grown to be; but it is only a
temporary affliction. She will get over it in a few weeks," said the
duke to himself, as he resumed the reading of his newspaper.

The next day Valerie arose at her usual hour, and breakfasted
_tete-a-tete_ with the duke. She knew that this day must decide her
fate, and she tried to nerve herself to bear all that it might bring her,
even as the frailest women sometimes brace themselves to bear torture and
death.

At eleven in the forenoon, the duke left the house to go to the Hotel de
Ville to keep an appointment that would detain him until three in the
afternoon.

Valerie knew all about this appointment, and had therefore fixed the hour
of noon as the safest time for her interview with the count.

Twelve o'clock, therefore, found her dressed in her deepest mourning, and
seated in her private drawing-room, awaiting the advent of her most
dreaded visitor, Waldemar de Volaski.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

A SENTENCE OF BANISHMENT.

Valerie, in an agony of terror, waited for her expected visitor.

Did she love him, then?

Ah, no! Horror at the position in which she found herself so filled her
soul as to leave no room for any softer emotion. She loved no one in the
world, not even herself; she wished for nothing on earth but death, and
only her religious faith, or her superstitious fears, restrained her from
laying sacrilegious hands upon her own life.

While watching for her dreaded guest she bitterly communed with herself.

"No one ever really loved me," she moaned. "Every one connected with me
loved only himself, or herself, and sacrificed me. My father and my
mother cared only for themselves and their own ambitions, and so they
immolated me, their only child, to their gratification; my suitors loved
only themselves and their passions, and immolated me! And I--I love no
one and hate myself! hate the creature they have all combined to make me!
If it were not for that which comes after death I would not exist an hour
longer--I would die!"

As she muttered this the little ormolu clock on the mantlepiece struck
twelve.

"The hour has come. He will be here in another moment! Oh, why could
he not leave me in peace? Oh, what shall I do?" she exclaimed, in her
excitement rising from her seat and beginning to pace up and down the
room with wild, disordered steps.

Sometimes she stopped to listen, bu