She shivers from head to foot, with a dumb agony in her eyes that might touch a heart of granite, but it does not touch this man, who only cries: “Thank God!--Thank God! I have been saved in time!” She falls upon her knees once more, grovelling at his feet. “Oh, Delaval! my love!--my love! don’t despise me! don’t loathe me! Have you no pity for me?--_one word!_” But he spurns her from him with a rough gesture, and rising, she stands a little apart. “No!” he says, in a hard, metallic tone, “I have no word for you--_not one_! If there are things I hate, they are lies and deceit. If there is a thing I never forgive, it is being made a fool of. Thank Heaven you have told me now who you are. _What_ you are, I do not care to know! Under the mask of youth and guilelessness you had nearly made me your slave, you had fired the train that was to bring me to everlasting shame and disgrace. Oh! I could kill myself for my cursed folly, my credulity, my utter blindness! But I am saved!--saved from being a dupe to a base woman, who scruples at nothing, not even the ruin of her sister’s home and life, just to salve a paltry wound to her vanity, to hold in her chains a man who had set her aside long ago, knowing her to be--_what she is_!” Clear and cutting, like a knife, his words fall on the shady, luxurious, silent room. Silent for one moment only, while he goes towards the door without one backward glance. Before he reaches it, however, a sharp click breaks the silence and Lord Delaval falls across the threshold---- _Shot!_ Gabrielle Beranger stoops down and gazes at the face of the man who has insulted her, then she kisses his lips, and, closing the door after her, steals noiselessly away. * * * * * The stars cluster thickly in the clear sky, and lights twinkle at each other across the broad bosom of the Seine, when a woman comes slowly and, pausing, looks down on the shimmering water. “Better to die _so_,” she mutters. “I am not good, neither was _he_, so we two may yet meet again!” A dull sound like a break in the water, a glint of golden hair on the edge of a ripple---- * * * * * Her face is fair even in death, as she lies here, in the terrible Morgue, among ghastly things that bring horror and shrinking to human hearts. “_Sapristi! C’est Marguerite Ange! La Blonde aux Yeux Noir_,” a man in a blouse says in a hushed voice, as he peers through the little glass window. “_Elle est belle à faire peur!_” answers his companion. And this is her requiem. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. THROUGH THE SHADOWS.