ed he, "what will become of you?"

A sob burst from the young girl's breast, and her strength seemed to
desert her limbs.

"I," answered she, in the calm, resigned voice of a Christian virgin
about to be cast to the lions that roared in the arena, "I have my
destiny. To-day is the last time that we shall ever meet. I shall return
to my home, where everything will shortly be known. I shall find my
father angry and menacing. He will place me in a carriage, and the next
day I shall find myself within the walls of the hated convent."

"But that life would be one long, slow agony to you. You have told me
this before."

"Yes," answered she, "it would be an agony, but it would also be an
expiation; and when the burden grows too heavy, I have this."

And as she spoke, she drew the little bottle from its hiding-place in
her bosom, and Norbert too well understood her meaning. The young man
endeavored to take it from her, but she resisted. This contest seemed
to exhaust her little strength, her beautiful eyes closed, and she sank
senseless into Norbert's arms. In an agony of despair, the young man
asked himself if she was dying; and yet there was sufficient life in
her to enable her to whisper, soft and low, these words, "My only
friend--let me have it back, dear Norbert." And then, with perfect
clearness, she repeated all the deadly properties of the drug, and the
directions for its use that the Counsellor had given to her.

On hearing the woman whom he loved with such intense passion confess
that she would sooner die than live apart from him, Norbert's brain
reeled.

"Diana, my own Diana!" repeated he, as he hung over her.

But she went on, as though speaking through the promptings of delirium.

"The very day after such a fair prospect! Ah, Duke de Champdoce! You are
a hard and pitiless man. You have robbed me of all I held dear in the
world, blackened my reputation, and tarnished my honor, and now you want
my life."

Norbert uttered such a cry of anger, that even Daumon in the passage was
startled by it. He placed Diana tenderly in the Counsellor's arm-chair,
saying,--

"No, you shall not kill yourself, nor shall you leave me."

She smiled faintly, and held out her arms to him. Her magic spells were
deftly woven.

"No," cried he; "the poison which you had intended to use on yourself
shall become my weapon of vengeance, and the instrument of punishment of
the one who has wronged you."

And with the gait of a ma