He turned to The White One, who sat three or four paces behind him, her manacled hands upon her knees. “So you are the famous White One. I am glad to meet you, madame, and I beg to assure you that the meeting with The White One will be all the more memorable to me since it took place on what afterward proved the last day of her memorable life.” That high, pale face returned his mocking courtesy with a gaze of blazing hatred. “Justice will not always withhold its hands from you,” she said. “This is the hour of your triumph--but that hour may not be for long!” “Pardon my saying it, madame,” returned he, “but one so near the end should cherish kindlier thoughts.” For all his air of free and easy mastery he was keeping his eye on the others to check any dangerous move. But this helpless invalid needed no watching, and he turned his back upon her, and gazed at Sonya and Borodin. “As for you, my dear cousins, it would be hypocrisy for your heir to make pretense of grief. So what more can I say than ‘I thank you.’” “Ring the bell!” returned Sonya. “In one moment I must, for see, the governor is returning to life to intrude upon our pleasant function.” He turned to Drexel. “So I make haste, my dear cousin-never-to-be, to wish that your taking-off may be as gentle as falling asleep, and that your waking may be among the angels!” Drexel kept contemptuous silence. The prince flashed upon them all a look of mocking, malignant triumph--a figure electric with power, coldly, cruelly handsome--a model of puissant, high-bred deviltry, fit for the emulation of the first gentleman of hell. “And now before the guards come in I will say good-bye to you all”--he bowed around--“and may your journey be pleasant!” He raised his hand for the stroke upon the bell, and held it aloft in fiendish pleasure of prolonging their suspense; and for a moment he stood there poised in his triumph. They stared at him, waiting breathless for the fatal hand to fall. Then their eyes widened, their lips parted, and in thrilled awe they stared beyond to the wheeled chair at his back, where sat the unfeared invalid. For something strange was happening with The White One. That snow-haired figure was slowly uprearing itself, whom none here had ever seen upon her feet before. She was of commanding height. In her thin face there blazed a stern fire; and this portentous look, her loose white hair, her priestess stature, the flowing robe in which they had garbed her, made her a figure of preternatural majesty. She moved three silent paces to the prince’s back, above whom she towered, and there she paused. The prince was bowing in mockery and saying with his sardonic smile: “And now once more, good-bye!”