riel, you shudder at yourself for you have done
it, you have committed a crime. I will have my share in it, half of it
belongs to me. In the sight of God, I am your wife, and you have sworn to
share everything with me. Then divide with me, Gabriel; I claim my right.
Share with me your crime, or I shall think that you love me no more, and
then I shall go away, and you will never see me more."

"I do love you, Rebecca--I do love you! For your sake I have become a
criminal, a murderer! I have purchased you at the price of my soul! Lay
your ear close to my mouth, and I will tell you my dreadful secret:
Rebecca, I am a murderer, a cursed murderer! I have committed a murder,
which will cry out to Heaven against me as long as I live; for him whom I
have murdered had never done me harm, but only good, and he confided in
me, and trusted to my faith. Rebecca, I am cursed, and my name will be a
byword in the mouths of men while books of history last. Rebecca, I have
poisoned the Electoral Prince Frederick William!"

She uttered a piercing shriek, and fell back, as if struck by a
thunderbolt.

"The Electoral Prince Frederick William! Not Count Schwarzenberg! The
noble youth; not that detested evildoer, not him, who has deserved death a
thousandfold?"

"He had not merely my life in his power, but yours and our child's. It
would have profited me nothing to murder him; we should only all three
have been irretrievably lost. I was forced to obey his orders--to perform
the horrible deed--in order to save you and myself."

Rebecca pressed both hands tightly across her brow, and stared long at
vacancy. "He must be saved!" she said. Then, after a pause, in a tone of
firm determination, "Yes, he must be saved!"

"What could we do to save him?" sighed Gabriel hopelessly. "Nothing! You
know your father's drugs are subtle, and never fail in their effects!"

"You administered to him some of the medicine which my father presented
you with?" asked she, with a wondrous gleam of light in her black eyes.

"Yes, I gave him some. You know when we took leave of your father he
handed me three boxes as a keepsake, saying that they were the only dowry
he could give me with you, but that many a prince would pay us immense
sums for them, if we should sell them to him for his dear relations; for
in these boxes were the deadliest poisons, leaving behind not a trace of
their existence. The contents of one box causes instantaneous death, and
he therefore