The cold gray morning light, shining through the little window of a small bedroom in a second-rate hotel at Lymington, made its way through the aperture between the common dimity curtains, which had been purposely separated overnight, and fell on the slumbering figure of Pauline. The poor and scanty furniture of the room, with its dingy bed-hangings, its wooden washstand, two rush-bottomed chairs, and rickety one-sided chest of drawers, all painted a pale stone-colour, were in strong contrast with the richness of colouring observable in the sleeper,--observable in her jet-black hair, now taken from off her face and gathered into one large coil at the back of her head; in her olive complexion, sun-embrowned indeed, but yet showing distinctly the ebb and flow of her southern blood; and in the deep orange-hued handkerchief daintily knotted round her neck. See, now, how troubled are her slumbers; how from between her parted lips comes a long though scarcely audible moan; how the strong thin hand lying outside the coverlet clutches convulsively at nothing; and how she seems in her unrest to be struggling to free herself from the thraldom of the troublous dream, under the influence of which part of the torture suffered by her during the previous day is again pressing upon her! Yes; the woman with the pale tear-blurred face is there once again. Once again Tom Durham stands at the carriage-door, whispering to her with evident earnestness, until the guard touches him on the shoulder, and the whistle shrieks, and then she bends forward, and he holds her for a moment in his outspread arms, and kisses her once, twice, thrice on her lips, until he is pulled aside by the porter coming to shut the door of the already-moving carriage, and she falls back in an agony of grief. There is a moisture in his eyes too; such as she, Pauline, with all her experience of him, has never seen there. He is the lover of this pale-faced woman, and therefore he must die! She will kill him herself! She will kill him with the pearl-handled knife which Gaetano, the mate of the Italian ship, gave her, telling her that all the Lombard girls wore such daggers in their garters, ready for the heart of any Tedesco who might insult them, or any other girl who might prove their rival. The dagger is upstairs, in the little bedroom at the top of the house, overlooking the Cannebière, which she shares with Mademoiselle Mathilde. She will fetch it at once; and after it has served its purpose she will carry it to the chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde, and hang it up among the votive offerings: the pictures of shipwrecks, storms, sea-fights, and surgical operations; the models of vessels, the ostrich-eggs, the crutches left by cripples no longer lame, and the ends of the ropes by which men have been saved from drowning. How clearly she can see the place, and all its contents, before her now! She will leave the dagger there: as the weapon by