“You could not tell one from the other. And that was my ruin. She wished to carry out through me her great idea--Cagliostro’s legacy.” “And had she documents?” “A scrap of paper ... the list of the four enigmas. One of her friends had found it in an old book; and it really seemed to be in Cagliostro’s handwriting. She was intoxicated by it and by her success with the Empress Eugenie, from whom she got most of her information. So I had to carry on the work. She put that into my head when I was quite a child. My brain was trained to hold only that idea. That was to be my livelihood--my destiny. I was the daughter of Cagliostro. I was to take up the life she had led, the life he had led--a life as brilliant as he leads in the romances in which he figures--the life of an adventuress, adored by everyone and dominating the world. No scruples--no conscience. I was to take vengeance for all that she had suffered. On her death-bed her last words to me were ‘Avenge me.’” Ralph reflected. Then he said: “But your crimes--this lust to kill?” He could not catch her answer, and again he did not catch it when he said: “Your mother was not the only person to bring you up and equip you for evil. Who was your father?” He fancied he caught the name of Leonard. But did she mean that Leonard was her father, the man who had been expelled from France in the days of the second empire--it was likely enough--or that Leonard had trained her in crime? He learned no more. He had loved her; and he had not the heart to force his way into those obscure regions in which evil instincts come to birth and are fostered, in which ferments everything that unbalances, ruins, and disintegrates, all the vices, the vanities, and blood-thirsty appetites, all the cruel and inexorable passions which escape from our control. He asked no more. Weeping silently, she caught his hands; and he was weak enough to abandon them to her. He felt her kisses and her tears rain on them. Insensibly pity filled his heart. The evil creature became a human being, a woman delivered over to a diseased instinct, the victim of the law of irresistible forces, one whom he ought perhaps to regard with at least a little indulgence. “Do not drive me from you,” she said. “You are the only being in the world who might have saved me from evil. I felt it at once. There is something so sane and healthy about you. Love is the only thing that has ever appeased me; and I have never loved anyone but you. So if you cast me off----”