reads your correspondence with Madame Seraphin
and Jacques Ferrand, as to the supposed death of the child; he will
believe me when he hears the confession of the notary, who, alarmed at
my threats, will come here immediately; he will believe me when he sees
the portrait of my daughter at six years of age, a portrait which the
woman told me was still a striking resemblance. So many proofs will
suffice to convince the prince that I speak the truth, and to decide him
as to his first impulse, which will make me almost a queen. Oh, if it
were but for a day, I could die content!"

At this moment a carriage was heard to enter the courtyard.

"It is he! It is Rodolph!" exclaimed Sarah.

Thomas Seyton drew a curtain hastily aside, and replied, "Yes, it is the
prince; he is just alighting from the carriage."

"Leave me! This is the decisive moment!" said Sarah, with unshaken
coolness; for a monstrous ambition, a pitiless selfishness, had always
been and still was the only moving spring of this woman. Even in the
almost miraculous reappearance of her daughter, she only saw a means of
at last arriving at the one end and aim of her whole existence.

Seyton said to her, "I will tell the prince how your daughter, believed
dead, was saved. This conversation would be too dangerous for you,--a
too violent emotion would kill you; and after so long a separation, the
sight of the prince, the recollection of bygone times--"

"Your hand, brother!" replied Sarah. Then, placing on her impassive
heart Tom Seyton's hand, she added, with an icy smile, "Am I excited?"

"No, no; not even a hurried pulsation," said Seyton, amazed. "I know not
what control you have over yourself; but at such a moment, when it is
for a crown or a coffin you play, your calmness amazes me!"

"And wherefore, brother? Till now, you know, nothing has made my heart
beat hastily; and it will only throb when I feel the sovereign crown
upon my brow. I hear Rodolph--leave me!"

When Rodolph entered the apartment, his look expressed pity; but, seeing
Sarah seated in her armchair, and, as it were, full dressed, he recoiled
in surprise, and his features became gloomy and mistrustful. The
countess, guessing his thoughts, said to him, in a low and faint voice,
"You thought to find me dying! You came to receive my last adieu!"

"I have always considered the last wishes of the dead as sacred, but it
appears now as if there were some sacrilegious deceit--"

"Be assured," said