"Well, listen to the secret which we can discuss," said she. "I wish to be associated with you in a good action, which, I hope, will lead to many another, if it is the first. One of these days, when you learn the story of my life, you will see there was a little good in it to shine on the dark background. Are you not willing to help me increase it? In this case, that good and honorable man will profit." Antonino listened spellbound, he could have been ordered up to their own terrible cannon's mouth by that resistless voice. "Let me live one day in your youth, illusions and unstained conscience," she implored. "Well, here in this little pocketbook are letters of credit for two hundred thousand francs. It is all I have--take it." "What am I to do with it?" said Antonino. "Put it away somewhere out of my reach to retake it. I know myself and that, if I have a good thought one day, I might entertain the reverse on the next. If I broke into the money, I could not replace the sum extracted, and, another thing, I cannot make the use of it I intended. Leave me to win from my husband the acceptance of the help I wish to give him. It may take long, but until then, pray keep the money; that will not entangle you in any degree." What a strange woman! he thought. She does evil with the easy, graceful air of an almsgiver distributing charity, and she does good with the stealth of a criminal! "I am a fair example of my sex," said she, divining what was in his mind, "weak, ignorant, unfortunate: and stupid--and the proof is any harm I have done to others is nothing to that I have wrought to myself." Antonino, taking the pocketbook--a dainty article in Russian leather--went to the oaken chest which he opened after what seemed some cabalistic manipulation, and the muttering of what seemed an "Open Sesame!" "Have you no safe yet, is that box strong and secure?" she inquired in a tone of well assumed anxiety, as she hurriedly took three or four steps to bring her again beside him. "You need not be alarmed. That is a box of which we made the peculiar fastenings. It is too heavy to be carried off, and burglars will not tamper with it in impunity," said the Italian, smiling maliciously, as he put his hand on the lid to raise it. "I understand; it opens with a secret lock?" "Yes; one I cannot tell you about." "I have no use for it," she said hastily, "on the contrary, I wish the money to be where I cannot touch it." "Nobody will touch it there," returned the young man gravely. "Stop! how will you get it if anything happens to me--if I should die?" "A young man like you die in a couple of days!" laughed Césarine. "It may occur," he replied gloomily. "Death has hovered over this house at any moment of some of our experiments with the most powerful essences of nature. And only this morning, when I was out to the post-office, they were talking of a hideous discovery--a young man's remains, found in a ditch in the Five Hectare Field." "A--a young man?"