"I tried to do so," returned she, seeming to relapse into painful seriousness; "but the raillery of the Duke, and the knowledge he shewed of your movements, alarmed me for the secret of the Empress; and then the cruel alternative! the Electress casting all those visits to my account, with insinuations----I cannot speak them." Her eye had caught the flashing light of her auditor's, and abruptly stopping, she covered her face with her hands. He stood motionless with indignation. At last forcing words from his quivering lip, he exclaimed; "Madam, I conjure you, tell me how the Electress, how Duke Wharton, could dare to couple your reputation and my presence with slander! and at all hazards I will disprove it." "Oh, no;" returned she, "you must not disprove, what duty to my Imperial mistress would not allow me to deny." Louis did not believe he had heard her distinctly,--he told her so. But she repeated what she had said; assuring him, with encreased agitation, that where she so entirely loved, as she did the Empress, her life was the least sacrifice she would make to preserve her interests. He gazed on her with doubtful admiration. "But to be silent at an aspersion on your fair name! that, Madam," cried he, "can never be a duty in your sex. A man may redeem himself from obloquy, a woman never can! and, if I am implicated in sullying your honour, I repeat again, I will disprove the slander at the peril of my life." "That can only be done between man and man;" said the Countess, in a collected voice; though inwardly alarmed for the consequence of a duel between her lover and the Duke. "And here the provocation came from the opposite sex. Duke Wharton merely amused himself with my confusion, after the Electress had presumed to make her charge. But were it otherwise, a violent assertion of my honour is beyond your power. Your life, Chevalier," added she, raising her eyes to his face, "is your own to give! but not the safety of the Sieur Ignatius; not the honour of the Baron de Ripperda; not the future happiness, public and private, of the Empress Elizabeth! These, and the other momentous interests you are so well aware of, all depend upon keeping secret from the Electress of Bavaria and her counsellors, the purport of your visits to these apartments. You could be admitted but for one of two reasons: to me, or to the Empress. And when hardly pressed by Her Highness last night; to avoid the treason of betraying my mistress, I was obliged,----" she turned away her blushing face as she added, "not merely, not to deny, but to sanction the suspicion, which caused the tears in which you surprised me."