s then: It was with my knowledge and permission that George was here
to-night. He came because I had asked him to do so, and I left the gate
in the garden wall open, so as to facilitate his entrance. He had not
been more than five minutes in the room, when you arrived, and he had
never been there before. It would have been easy for me to have left
you; but as I bear your name, I could not dishonor it. As you entered,
he was entreating me to fly with him; both his life and his honor were
in my hands. Ah, why did I pause for an instant? Had I consented, he
would still have been alive, and in some far distant country he and
I might have learned that this world has something more to offer than
unhappiness and misery. Yes, as you will have it, you shall have all. I
loved him ere I knew that you even existed. I have only my own folly to
blame, only my own unhappy weakness to deplore. Why did I not steadily
refuse to become your wife? You say that you have slain George. Not so,
for in my heart his memory will ever remain bright and ineffaceable."

"Beware!" said Norbert furiously, "beware if----"

"Ah, would you kill me too? Do not fear resistance; my life is a blank
without him. He is dead; let death come to me; it would be a welcome
visitant. The only kindness that you could now bestow upon me would
be my death-blow. Strike then, and end it all! In death we should be
united, George and I; and as my limbs grew stiff and my breath passed
away, my whitening lips would murmur words of thanks."

Norbert listened to her, overwhelmed by the intensity of her passion,
and marvelling that he had any power to feel after the terrible event
which had fallen upon his devoted head.

Could this be Marie, the soft and gentle woman, who spoke with such
passionate vehemence and boldly braved his anger? How could he have so
misunderstood her? He forgot all his anger in his admiration. She seemed
to him to have undergone a complete change. There was an unearthly style
of beauty around her--her eyes blazed and shone with the lurid light of
a far-distant planet, while her wealth of raven hair fell in disordered
masses on her shoulders. It was passion, real passion, that he beheld
to-night, not that mere empty delusion which he had so long followed
blindly. Marie was really capable of a deep-rooted feeling of adoration
for the man she loved, while with Diana de Mussidan, the woman with her
fair hair and the steel-blue eyes, love was but the lust