c requested Aunt Claudine to
remain in the lower room, where the Banker was still sitting quietly,
and went with the Sister of Mercy to Bella.

"Leave us alone together for a moment," begged Bella. "No, that would
excite suspicion. Remain."--"Foh! suspicion!" shrieked Bella. "You men
are all hypocrites. Let the world say what it will, leave us alone.
Every thing is a lie, and he was a liar too."

Eric was alone with Bella who said,--

"I have received a punishment more horrible than the most cunning Devil
could ever have contrived. Herr Dournay, it is said that I, Bella
Pranken, have strangled my husband,--I have sacrificed my life to be
now suspected of this! Here I stand: whatever I have done, whatever I
have thought, now is it a thousand-fold atoned for. And I curse it that
I have been faithful. He wore the picture of another woman on his heart
until his heart ceased to beat."

"The Doctor is here," was suddenly called outside.

The Doctor and Pranken entered; and the Doctor said,--

"I know the whole. This blockhead of a coroner! Every ignorant person
knows that a wound on a corpse is a very different thing from one on a
living body. There is only a trifling mark, a little abrasion of the
skin on the Count's neck. Can't you tell me what made this?"

Bella now narrated that Robert had come to ask her whether they should
leave the picture, which the Count wore on his heart, to be buried with
him. She asked what sort of a picture it was, and was told that it was
that of a lady. Hurrying there in her excitement, which she now
lamented, she had snatched from the corpse the picture which was hung
by a small cord about the neck.

"It was the miniature of his deceased wife: here it is," said she. She
pointed to a gentle face, on a thin plate of gold.

The Doctor and Eric looked at the picture, and then at Bella. Eric
thought to himself, "This was why he had the bust of the Victoria
brought to his bedside. Wonderful likeness!"

The Doctor said that they must not make known publicly this passionate
act of the Countess as the occasion of the coroner's mistake. He begged
them to fall in with his explanation, that some of the caustic medicine
which the invalid had taken had dropped down about the string, and
caused this abrasion.

To his horror, Eric now recollected that Clodwig had exhorted him to
take something from his bosom after he was dead. He told of this now;
and the Doctor and Bella shook their heads.