The poor girl gave a terrible shriek of agony, and flung herself into the arms of her husband, while again there sounded the wicked laugh of the Marchesa. "Ah! you cannot save her now, traitor! perjurer that you are! she will die!" There was a sudden smash of glass, as Beltrami hurled himself through the archway and stood before his terrible wife. "You lie, wretch! Here is the antidote!" Bianca was lying unconscious in Guiseppe's arms, and he, with a cry of joy, stretched out his hand for the phial which Beltrami, standing midway between his wife and the tenor, was holding. Suddenly, with a shriek of rage, the Marchesa sprang forward, and tearing the phial from his hand, hurled it through the open window into the street. "No, no! She shall die! She shall die!" I shall never forget that supreme moment of anguish. Bianca lying pale as a lily in the arms of her agonized husband; myself standing amid the ruins of the table in the archway; the Marchesa erect, defiant, and snarling like an enraged tigress; and only Beltrami calm--Beltrami standing cold and inflexible, with folded arms and a sinister smile on his thin lips. The whole of this frightful drama had only lasted a few minutes, but the denouement, more terrible than anything that had gone before, had now arrived. "She shall die!" repeated the Marchesa with devilish persistency. Beltrami gave a wild laugh that sounded like the mocking merriment of a fiend,-- "Fool! you have thrown away your life!" Guiseppe looked up with sudden hope, and the Marchesa with a cry of abject terror reeled back with staring eyes and outstretched arms as the truth flashed across her mind. "Life! life! oh! devil that you are, you--you--have changed--" The fierce beauty of her face was suddenly distorted by a spasm of agony. She put her hands to her throat and tore open her dress, tore off the ruby necklace, the gems of which flashed down to the floor like a rain of blood, then with a yell of fear which had nothing human in its despair, she fell at our feet--dead. Yes, she had fallen into her own pit; she had flung away her only chance of life in her desire to doom her rival and there amid the brilliant sunshine, amid the blood-red jewels scattered around her, with all her crimes, devilries, and wickedness on her head, lay the dead body of that Creature of the Night I had seen issue like a vampire from the old sepulchre to fulfil her evil destiny; and over her with folded arms, sinister and cruel, towered the man who, as the instrument of God, had sent her back to the hell from whence she had emerged. CHAPTER XVIII. A LAST WORD.