black, hellion shape which floated softly as in a pool of oil, on an oblong square of sluggish sunshine shimmering on the floor, just behind the chair of Mr. Lafitte. Angry words had been uttered in that room within the last few minutes—angry at least on the part of Madame Lafitte, who sat away from the sunlight, opposite her husband, with a table laid with fruit and wine between them. She was of the superbest type of southern beauty—and there is no beauty more exquisite; but now her lovely olive face was dusky white with fury and agony—its pallor heightened by contrast with her intense black hair, which she wore in heavy tresses drooping almost to the broad gold ornaments in her ears. Silent at present, she sat with her white arms tightly clasped below her bosom, which convulsively rose and fell beneath its muslin folds, and with dilated nostrils, and pale lips curved with hate and grief, kept her dark eyes, lustrous with passion, fixed on the evil visage of her husband. “You are well named,” she broke forth again, her voice, a rich contralto, trembling with vehemence; “but you are worse than your pirate namesake. Worse than the worst of that Baratarian crew. Lafitte! Lafitte, indeed! You are worse than he. Worse than Murrell. Worse than anybody. Devil that you are!” She paused again, speechless with fury. The tornado which many thought the brassy flare upon the landscape portended, had its proper fulfillment in the raging whirl of passions within her. Mr. Lafitte sat at ease, slowly tilting his chair to and fro, the jewelled fingers of his brown left hand clasped around the stem of a crystal goblet on the table, his right hand carelessly thrust into a side pocket of his white coat, and regarded her with a sardonic smile on his dark visage, while slipping to and fro in the sluggish pool of light upon the floor, his shadow, like a black familiar, moved with an oily motion behind him. “Anything more, my angel?” he asked in a soft, smooth, courteous voice, habitual with him: “any more epithets? Pray continue. Go on, light of my life, go on. Indulge your own Lafitte—your pirate lover. He loves to hear you.”