His heart overflowed; his beautiful eager eyes filled with tears, of which he was ashamed, but which he could not check. Giraldi released his hands and turned away, passing his hand across his eyes. When after a brief pause he turned back, there was a look of humble joy upon his expressive countenance, and his voice sounded softer than before as he said: "And now, my dear young friend, you will not forget this hour, nor what I now say; I am a poor man in spite of what people say; but anything in my power shall be done for you, for a glance of the eyes so wonderfully like those for which I would go to meet death this day as cheerfully as I would go to a feast. Come!" He put his arm familiarly within Ottomar's, and led him to the door which he opened and let his guest precede him. Ottomar did not turn; if he had he would have been appalled at the convulsively distorted face of the man who was holding the handle of the door in his left hand, while he raised the outstretched fingers of the right hand like a vulture's claws as he strikes down his victim from behind. The Count's entrance into the drawing-room had greatly surprised the Baroness; but a moment's reflection had been enough for her quick wits to guess at the state of affairs, and that this surprise was the work of Giraldi, the result of which she was to observe and by-and-by to report upon. Such an incentive was not needed, indeed; Elsa had become so dear to her in this one hour; every look of the joyous brown eyes, which, she well knew, could look so earnest too, every word that came from the little mouth, every movement of the slender, graceful figure--all, all was balm to her aching heart, that was languishing for true affection, for beautiful, undefaced humanity. How far behind the tender grace of her favourite must the brilliant Carla stand! Carla, with whom everything, every tone, every gesture, every turn of her eyes, every movement was called into play by an insatiable thirst for admiration, which did not by any means always attain its object, and often far outstripped its aim. She had closely compared the two girls, and each time told herself that a man who had Elsa for a sister could not really love Carla, and that no good would come of the engagement for Ottomar, even if he had not passed the threshold to it, so to speak, over the body of the forsaken beauty who was breaking her heart now in despair. To her who had been initiated into the secret by her tyrant, the remorse which devoured him spoke only too plainly in the nervous glitter of his beautiful eyes, in his sullen silence or the forced speech to which he again roused himself, and in the constant gnawing of the delicate lip between his sharp teeth. And she, who had given her hand and her word to the unhappy man, seemed to see and suspect nothing of all this! She could chatter and laugh, and flirt with the Count exactly as she had done a minute before with her