uld not confess,
with the desire to kill in my bosom.

"Yet let that pass. Supposing there be a heaven, if we kill her for her
treachery to you will not that sin be wiped out? May she not gain
heaven? And if so, what of our vengeance? Death is swift! What will she
suffer? It will be those who are left behind who will feel the pain; for
her, there will be a happiness beyond even the happiness of earth. She
will be shriven of her sin by our vengeance.

"Think of this, my dear uncle! Do not imagine that I am growing
faint-hearted; do not imagine that I am drawing back from the task which
I now claim as my right. Death, or some other sort of punishment, shall
surely fall upon her; she shall not escape! Only think what is best.

"Write to me all that is in your heart. Fear not to speak out! I would
know all. Farewell! Your loving

"MARGHARITA."

* * * * *

_Letter from the Count Leonardo di Marioni, the Palazzo Carlotti, Rome,
to Miss Margharita Briscoe, Mallory Grange, Lincolnshire._

"BELOVED MARGHARITA: I will confess that your letter troubles me. If
there be heaven for the woman who wrecked my life, there is no heaven
for me, no religion, no God. You say that she is a good woman. She is
then a good woman through fear. She seeks to atone, but she can never
atone. She won a boy's passionate love; she wore his heart upon her
sleeve; she cast it away at the moment of her pleasure. She broke the
vows of an order, which should have been as sacred to her as the face of
God to the angels; and she sent a Marioni to rot through a useless life
in a miserable prison. The boy whose heart she broke, and the man whose
life she severed, lives only to nurse his unchanging and unchangeable
hate for her. Away with all other thoughts, my vengeance knows but one
end, and that is death! Not sudden death, mind! but death--slow,
lingering, and painful. I would see the struggle against some mysterious
sickness, with my own eyes; I would stand by the bedside and mock, I
would watch the cheeks grow thin and pale, and the eyes grow dim. She
should know me in those last moments. She should see me, the wasted
shadow of a man, myself on the threshold of the grave, standing by her
bedside, cold and unpitying, and holding out toward her a white
hyacinth.

"That is how I would have it, though thus it may not be. Yet speak to me
not of any other vengeance save death. Let none other dwell for a moment
in your though