"Be it so, Gina," he observed, after reflection; "you deserve more sacrifice on my part than this. But all confidence must cease between us: from this time we are to each other as strangers." "Even so," she acquiesced. "Yet if you deem my enduring affection deserves requital, give me at times a look as of old; a smile, unperceived by others, but acknowledged by, and too dear to, my own heart. It will be a token that you have not driven away all remembrance of our once youthful love, though it is at an end for ever." He took her hand and clasped it tenderly, but the next moment he almost flung it from him, and had turned and quitted the room. Gina burst into a violent fit of weeping, and slowly retreated to seek the solitude of her chamber. Scarcely had the echo of her footsteps died away in the gallery, when the door of a closet appertaining to the room was cautiously pushed open, and out stepped the Signora Lucrezia, her eyes and mouth wide open, and her hair standing on end. "May all the saints reject me if ever I met with such a plot as this!" she ejaculated. "I knew there was something going on underneath, but the deuce himself would never have suspected this. So the innocent-faced madam has not been winding herself round the Lady Adelaide for nothing--the she-wolf in sheep's petticoats! Something was said, too, that I could not catch, about her irreligion. The hypocrite dare not go to confession, probably, and so keeps away. The letter of the wedding night is explained now, and that changing, as they both did, to the hue of a mort-cloth at sight of each other. May I die unabsolved if so sly a conspiracy ever came up. However, I shall not interfere yet awhile. Let my baby-mistress look out for herself: she has not pleased me of late, showering down marks of favor upon this false jade. _Her_ rival! if she did but know it! I'll keep my eyes and ears open. Two lovers cannot live for ever under the same roof without betraying their secret; and there will be an explosion some day, or my name is not Lucrezia Andrini." From Household Words A FASHIONABLE FORGER.