"I pity your sad life, madame, if you have proved all false," said Margaret, with feeling, "for there are good men on earth, I doubt not." "The best die; the fairest, the most loved," said madame, faintly. "Miss Walsingham, I had one son--ah!"--she shivered and closed her eye--"and he died miserably. I loved him, I did love him, and he was my only consolation for many years." She dashed her tears away and looked up sternly. "You make me talk to you, with your soft, true face," she exclaimed, bitterly, "and I must not talk. But mind, I have told you nothing; you can't say that I have narrated any of my history to you." "I had not thought of saying so," replied Margaret. "Ah, you are a good soul, and I like you," murmured madame, patting Margaret's hand with a touch like falling rose-leaves. "So sweet, so heroic, so humble! You remind me of myself many years ago in old Austria, when I was in love with--my destroyer!" Her face hardened, her green eyes glimmered with the deadly light of hate. She turned off her momentary remorse with a heartless laugh, and rattled her _collier_ of golden lockets. "Each of these lockets," sneered madame, "contains a victim to my power of fascination, [there were at least a dozen,] and the whole string of them was presented to me by an old vice admiral who fell in love with me at Barbadoes last winter, and escorted me to the Bermudas when I went there. My good lady, that first foolish passion of mine has so destroyed my powers of mercy that I love to torture mankind and madden them with false expectations, if only I might be revenged." The beautiful lips of the lady suddenly compressed with a cruel expression, and looking up, Margaret beheld the Chevalier de Calembours hurrying across the room to join them. "The Chevalier de Calembours wishes to be presented to you," said Margaret. Those gleaming, chrysolite orbs flashed a full upward glare in the chevalier's face. He recoiled, he changed color, and became strangely silent. "So glad to meet the chevalier," murmured madame, with an inimitable elegance of manner. Monsieur's face relaxed; he drew near her, dazzled as with the eye of a rattlesnake. "Incomparable madame, where have we met before?" inquired he, with soft insinuation. She honored him with a glance of astonishment and an artless smile. "Indeed I cannot say, chevalier," she minced, "unless we've met in dreams." "Pardon the presumption, madame, _mon amie_," persisted the chevalier, growing very pale, "but I think we are not strangers." Another change swept over Madame Hesslein's ever-changeful face; all resemblance of her late self disappeared, and a bold, brilliant, haughty creature sat in her place, smiling with supercilious amusement at the little Bohemian's blunder.