“‘Then I believe I went mad, and for weeks I scoured Paris in quest of her, but found her not, and I grew desperate, for I knew the world better than she did, and knew he would not marry her, and so the wretched months dragged on and grew into a year and a half, and then the white-haired father wrote me our darling was dead, where, or how, or when he did not know, only she was dead, with a blight on her name I was sure, and I think I was glad she was gone before she grew to be what I was. I folded away all the pretty dresses and trinkets I had saved for her; I put them in a chest and turned the key, and called it _Petite’s_ grave, and made another grave in my heart, and buried there every womanly instinct and feeling, and stamped them down and said I did not care to what lengths I went now that _Petite_ was gone. Then I painted my face, and braided my hair, and put on all my diamonds, and went to the opera that very night, and was stared at and commented upon, and called the best dressed woman there, and I had a _petit souper_ after at my home, and was admired and complimented by the men who partook of my hospitality, and whom I hated so bitterly because they were men, and through such as they _ma Petite_ was in her grave.’ “‘And did you never hear how she died, or where?’ Anna asked, without a shadow of suspicion as to the truth. “‘Yes,’ Eugenie replied. ‘After years—three years, I believe, though they seemed a hundred to me—I heard that my darling was pure and white as the early snow which falls on the fields in the country. The wretch could not possess her without the marriage tie, and so entangled was he with another woman, who had great power over him, that he dared not make her his wife; and so there was a form, which would not stand and was no marriage at all, and when she found it out she went mad, and died with a song of home on her lips. Yes, went mad—mad, my darling. You know whom I mean.’ “She hissed out the two words, ‘mad, mad,’ and rocked to and fro in her anguish, while Anna, with a face as white as the dead girl’s in her grave, whispered back: “‘You mean Agatha.’ “‘Yes, I mean Agatha—Agatha—my pet, my pride, my idol. Agatha, lured, deceived, betrayed, ruined, murdered by the man on whom I who would have given my heart’s blood to save her, was even then wasting my blandishments, and doing all I could to keep him from a new love. Oh, Agatha, if you could but know the grief I am enduring for my sin. No Magdalen ever repented more bitterly than do I, but for me there is no voice bidding me sin no more, and I shall go on and on, deeper and deeper, till the horror of the pit overtakes me, and Agatha and I will never meet again—never, never.’