ed and nervous.
Everything recalled to him Marsa, and she seemed to be once more taking
possession of his heart, as a vine puts forth fresh tendrils and clings
again to the oak after it has been torn away.

"She also suffers!" he said aloud, after they had walked some distance
in silence.

"Fortunately!" growled Varhely; and then, as if he wished to efface his
harshness, he added, in a voice which trembled a little: "And for that
reason she is, perhaps, not unworthy of pardon."

"Pardon!"

This cry escaped from Zilah in accents of pain which struck Varhely like
a knife.

"Pardon before punishing--the other!" exclaimed the Prince, angrily.

The other! Yanski Varhely instinctively clinched his fist, thinking,
with rage, of that package of letters which he had held in his hands,
and which he might have destroyed if he had known.

It was true: how was pardon possible while Menko lived?

No word more was spoken by either until they reached the villa; then
Prince Zilah shook Yanski's hand and retired to his chamber. Lighting
his lamp, he took out and read and reread, for the hundredth time
perhaps, certain letters--letters not addressed to him--those
letters which Varhely had handed him, and with which Michel Menko had
practically struck him the day of his marriage.

Andras had kept them, reading them over at times with an eager desire
for further suffering, drinking in this species of poison to irritate
his mental pain as he would have injected morphine to soothe a physical
one. These letters caused him a sensation analogous to that which gives
repose to opium-eaters, a cruel shock at first, sharp as the prick of a
knife, then, the pain slowly dying away, a heavy stupor.

The whole story was revived in these letters of Marsa to Menko:--all
the ignorant, credulous love of the young girl for Michel, then her
enthusiasm for love itself, rather than for the object of her love, and
then, again--for Menko had reserved nothing, but sent all together--the
bitter contempt of Marsa, deceived, for the man who had lied to her.

There were, in these notes, a freshness of sentiment and a youthful
credulity which produced the impression of a clear morning in early
spring, all the frankness and faith of a mind ignorant of evil and
destitute of guile; then, in the later ones, the spontaneous outburst of
a heart which believes it has given itself forever, because it thinks it
has encountered incorruptible loyalty and undying devo