"Poor Miss Walsingham!" said madame, with a rippling laugh of wicked glee; "I shall chase away that look of stern dislike which has settled upon your face ever since you discovered that I added gambling to my other sins--I shall make you like me in spite of yourself. Come, chevalier, turn my music." She strolled gracefully down the long drawing-room, attended by the elated chevalier, who had never been so happy in his life, and, followed by the wondering and admiring eyes of a score of both sexes, took her seat at the piano. But Margaret turned her back, and shut her heart against the bold and erring creature, whose beauty was but the fatal bewitchment of clever wickedness, whose spasms of grief were the last expiring gleams of a better nature which she sedulously quenched. Madame played some air, fairy nonsense, that her little hands might glamour the rapt chevalier in their bird-like glancings here and there; and then, with a defiant glance over her shoulder at cold Margaret Walsingham, she stole into a theme with sentiment, with soul in every chord. Ah, those strains of tender sadness! how they rose and fell in persistent plaint! how they mourned, and whispered of hope, mourned again in homeless accents! Then these waves of stronger passion--how they surged from grief to fury! how they gushed from beneath the glancing hands in menacing strains and conquering thunder! It was as if a Frederic Chopin sat before the keys, instead of that small Circe. Then these songs, so wild, so caroling, so purely joyous--could Sappho sing more burningly of happiness and love? Margaret forgot her chill disdain of the perverted nature, forgot her own heart-trouble, even forgot St. Udo Brand in her trance of ravishment; and unconscious that she did so, rose and stood beside the wondrous St. Cecilia. Madame raised her mock-simple eyes--they were not disappointed--Margaret was bending over her with a fascinated face, and the chevalier was wrapped in his study of the fair musician. "Thanks for that act of homage," said Madame Hesslein, gravely, to Margaret; then dropping her tones, and rising, "I thought I could make you like me. I came here, to this hotel, to make you like me, because I had something pleasant to tell you; and I never do a favor for any one who presumes to criticise me unfavorable. Griselda, patient soul, come to my room, and we shall talk." She drew the astonished Margaret's hand within her arm, gave a majestic bow to the flushed chevalier, and led the unresisting girl out of the drawing-room to her own luxurious apartments. "Now, my good lady," observed Madame Hesslein, airily. "I have conceived something like appreciation of your humdrum goodness, and since I see a good deal of intellect at the back of it, I am disposed to do you a good turn, hoping that, charity-like, it may cover a multitude of my sins."