the idea, and to act upon it,
were, in her active mind, the same. Young, beautiful, fascinating, she
well knew the power of her attractions, and determined, though probably
without one thought of transgressing the limits of literal propriety, to
bring them to bear upon the discontented, retired roue, for whom she
cared absolutely nothing, except as the instrument, and in part the
victim of her schemes. Thus yielding to the double instinct that swayed
her, she gratified, at the same time, her love of intrigue and her love
of power. At length, however, came the hour which demanded a sacrifice to
the evil influence she had hitherto worshipped on such easy terms. She
found that her power must now be secured by crime, and she fell. Then
came the arrival of Sir Wynston--his murder--her elopement with Marston,
and her guilty and joyless triumph. At last, however, came the blow, long
suspended and terrific, which shattered all her hopes and schemes, and
drove her once again upon the world. The catastrophe we have just
described. After it she made her way to Paris. Arrived in the capital of
France, she speedily dissipated whatever remained of the money and
valuables which she had taken with her from Gray Forest; and Madame
Marston, as she now styled herself, was glad to place herself once more
as a governess in an aristocratic family. So far her good fortune had
prevailed in averting the punishment but too well earned by her past
life. But a day of reckoning was to come. A few years later France was
involved in the uproar and conflagration of revolution. Noble families
were scattered, beggared, decimated; and their dependants, often dragged
along with them into the flaming abyss, in many instances suffered the
last dire extremities of human ill. It was at this awful period that a
retribution so frightful and extraordinary overtook Madame Marston, that
we may hereafter venture to make it the subject of a separate narrative.
Until then the reader will rest satisfied with what he already knows of
her history; and meanwhile bid a long, and as it may possibly turn out,
an eternal farewell to that beautiful embodiment of an evil and
disastrous influence.

The concluding chapter in a novel is always brief, though seldom so short
as the world would have it. In a tale like this, the "winding up" must be
proportionately contracted. We have scarcely a claim to so many lines as
the formal novelist may occupy pages, in the distribution of po