actress whom you undertook to educate. But I know that
you can be eloquent, so spare me any brilliant appeals, which can only
go to prove that already settled fact. Between you and me lie two
great gulfs. The one I have told you of; and from it I shrink. The
other I have not told you of; from it you would shrink."

"The first is your Quest of the Sangreal."

She smiled assent, bitterly enough.

"And the second?"

She did not answer. She was looking at herself in the mirror; and
Stangrave, in spite of his almost doting affection, flushed with
anger, almost contempt, at her vanity.

And yet, was it vanity which was expressed in that face? No; but
dread, horror, almost disgust, as she gazed with side-long, startled
eyes, struggling, and yet struggling in vain, to turn her face from
some horrible sight, as if her own image had been the Gorgon's head.

"What is it? Marie, speak!"

But she answered nothing. For that last question she had no heart to
answer; no heart to tell him that in her veins were some drops, at
least, of the blood of slaves. Instinctively she had looked round at
the mirror--for might he not, if he had eyes, discover that secret for
himself? Were there not in her features traces of that taint? And as
she looked,--was it the mere play of her excited fancy,--or did her
eyelid slope more and more, her nostril shorten and curl, her lips
enlarge, her mouth itself protrude?

It was more than the play of fancy; for Stangrave saw it as well as
she. Her actress's imagination, fixed on the African type with an
intensity proportioned to her dread of seeing it in herself, had
moulded her features, for the moment, into the very shape which it
dreaded. And Stangrave saw it, and shuddered as he saw.

Another half minute, and that face also had melted out of the mirror,
at least for Marie's eyes; and in its place an ancient negress,
white-haired, withered as the wrinkled ape, but with eyes closed--in
death. Marie knew that face well; a face which haunted many a dream
of hers; once seen, but never forgotten since; for to that old dame's
coffin had her mother, the gay quadroon woman, flaunting in finery
which was the price of shame, led Marie when she was but a three
years' child; and Marie had seen her bend over the corpse, and call it
her dear old granny, and weep bitter tears.

Suddenly she shook off the spell, and looked round and clown,
terrified, self-conscious. Her eye caught Stangrave's; she saw, or
tho