That night Lucille was haunted with ugly dreams. Voices were speaking to her in threats and blasphemies from the little vial. The mysterious lady in white would sit huddled up at the foot of her bed, and the more she smiled the more terrible became her scowl, until at last her countenance began to dilate, and she slowly advanced her face closer and closer, until, just as her smiling lips reached Lucille, she uttered a yell, whether of imprecation or terror she could not hear, but which scared her from her sleep like a peal of thunder. Then a great coffin was standing against the wall with Monsieur Le Prun in it dead and shrouded, and a troop of choristers began singing a requiem, when on a sudden the furious voice she had heard that evening screamed aloud, "To what purpose all this hymning, seeing the corpse is possessed by evil spirits;" and then such looks of rage and hatred flitted over the livid face in the coffin, as nothing but hell could have inspired. Then again she would see Monsieur Le Prun struggling, his face all bloody and distorted, with the man in red and the strange lady of the talisman, who screamed, laughing with a detestable glee, "Come bride, come, the bridegroom waits." Such horrid dreams as these haunted her all night, so much so that one might almost have fancied that an evil influence had entered her chamber with the little vial. But the songs of gay birds pruning their wings, and the rustle of the green leaves glittering in the early sun round her window, quickly dispelled the horrors which had possessed her little room in the hours of silence and darkness. It was, notwithstanding, with a sense of fear and dislike that she opened the drawer where the little vial lay, and unrolling all the paper envelopes in which it was carefully folded, beheld it once more in the clear light of day. "Nothing, nothing, but a grotesque little scent-bottle--why should I be afraid of it?--a poor little pretty toy." So she said, as she folded it up again, and deposited it once more where it had lain all night. But for all that she felt a mysterious sense of relief when she ran lightly from her chamber into the open air, conscious that the harmless little toy was no longer present. V.--THE CHATEAU DES ANGES.