“Nor I,” answered the fortunate lover. He then surrendered himself to her charm. He forgot how often he had privately declared he would never do so; forgot how often he had told himself that Annette de Vries was a beauty with [Illustration: “IN THAT DIM ROOM, WHERE ONLY SLEEP KEPT VIGIL, ACHILLE ASKED ANNETTE TO BE HIS WIFE.”] a heart like a little glacier. As for Annette, she was satisfied. In the first days of her acquaintance with Achille St. Ange she had resolved to be his wife; and her resolve was now in process of accomplishment. And after all, it had not been a difficult end to attain; a little love, a little listening, a little patience, a little persistence, and the man was won. It was only another case of proving the folly of any resistance to invincible woman. For has not all experience proved that if a woman seriously determines to marry a certain man she is about as sure to accomplish her end as if, wishing to reach Washington, she entered a train bound for that city? During this scene between Annette and Achille Sappha and Leonard Murray were walking in the clear, frosty starlight. They were lovers, but their conversation was too anxious to be loverlike. Sappha was entreating Leonard to cancel his engagement with Mr. Burr. She was sure if he did not her father would permit no engagement with his daughter. “You will have to choose,” she said, “between Mr. Burr and myself. You cannot take both into your life, Leonard; I am sure it is impossible.” She did not name the Ring tragedy. She was far less impressed by it than Leonard had been. It was her father’s opposition she feared. Not so Leonard. He had inherited from his Scotch ancestors a vivid vein of supernatural tendency. His own clan had numerous traditions of posthumous revenge, so vindictive that Leonard’s first unconscious commentary on madame’s narrative was the whispered exclamation--only heard by Achille--“The vengeance of the dead is terrible!” But if there was this latent fear in his heart, mingled with the personal one that association might include him in that vengeance, the feeling was strongly combated by another inherited tendency, so vital as to be almost beyond reasoning with--the sentiment of loyalty to a person or a cause to which he had once given his allegiance. It had been a kind of insanity in his clan, for they had always gathered to the last man in the cause of their exiled kings, though they knew right well that to stand by the Stuarts was to stand by misfortune and death.