must merely, while passing, have chanced to witness the gesture of mingled emotion and affection with which Cleotos had bidden her farewell. Surely that was a matter which would require but little explanation. 'Do you not hear me?' cried Sergius, glaring with wild passion from her to Cleotos and back again to her. 'Was it necessary that my honor should be placed in a slave's keeping? Was there no one of noble birth with whom you could be false, but that you must bring this deeper degradation upon my name?' AEnone drew herself up with mingled scorn and indignation. His anger, which at another time would have crushed her, now passed almost unheeded; for the sense of injury resulting from his cruel taunt and from his readiness, upon such slight foundation, to believe her guilty, gave her strength to combat him. The words of self-justification and of reproach toward him were at her lips, ready to break forth in unaccustomed force. In another moment the torrent of her indignant protestations would have burst upon him. Already his angry look began to quail before the steadfast earnestness of her responsive gaze. But all at once her tongue refused its utterance, her face turned ghastly pale, and her knees seemed to sink beneath her. For, upon glancing one side, she beheld the gaze of Leta fixedly fastened upon her over Sergius's shoulder. In the sparkle of those burning eyes and in the curve of those half-parted lips, there appeared no longer any vestige of the former pretended sympathy or affection. There was now malice, scorn, and hatred--all those expressions which, from time to time, had separately excited doubt and dread, now combining themselves into one exulting glance of open triumph, disdainful of further concealment, since at last the long-sought purpose seemed attained. AEnone turned away with a sickening, heart-breaking feeling that she was now lost, indeed. It was no mystery, any longer, that the slave girl must have listened at the open door, and have cunningly contrived that her master should appear at such time as seemed most opportune for her purposes. And how must every unconscious action, every innocent saying have been noted down in the tablets of that crafty mind! What explanation, indeed, could be given of those trivial caresses now so surely magnified and distorted into evidences of degrading criminality?