Stangrave looked at her startled. Was she mad? Her face did not say so; her brow was white, her features calm, her eye fierce and contemptuous, but clear, steady, full of meaning. "So you know Mr. Thurnall?" said she, after a while. "Yes; why do you ask?" "Because he is the only friend I have on earth." "The only friend, Marie?" "The only one," answered she calmly, "who, seeing the right, has gone and done it forthwith. When did you see him last?" "I have not been acquainted with Mr. Thurnall for some years," said Stangrave, haughtily. "In plain words, you have quarrelled with him?" Stangrave bit his lip. "He and I had a difference. He insulted my nation, and we parted." She laughed a long, loud, bitter laugh, which rang through Stangrave's ears. "Insulted your nation? And on what grounds, pray?" "About that accursed slavery question!" La Cordifiamma looked at him with firm-closed lips a while. "So then! I was not aware of this! Even so long ago you saw the Sangreal, and did not know it when you saw it. No wonder that since then you have been staring at it for months, in your very hands, played with it, admired it, made verses about it, to show off your own taste: and yet were blind to it the whole time! Farewell, then!" "Marie, what do you mean?" and Stangrave caught both her hands. "Hush, if you please. I know you are eloquent enough, when you choose, though you have been somewhat dumb and monosyllabic to-night in the presence of the actress whom you undertook to educate. But I know that you can be eloquent, so spare me any brilliant appeals, which can only go to prove that already settled fact. Between you and me lie two great gulfs. The one I have told you of; and from it I shrink. The other I have not told you of; from it you would shrink." "The first is your Quest of the Sangreal." She smiled assent, bitterly enough. "And the second?" She did not answer. She was looking at herself in the mirror; and Stangrave, in spite of his almost doting affection, flushed with anger, almost contempt, at her vanity. And yet, was it vanity which was expressed in that face? No; but dread, horror, almost disgust, as she gazed with side-long, startled eyes, struggling, and yet struggling in vain, to turn her face from some horrible sight, as if her own image had been the Gorgon's head. "What is it? Marie, speak!" But she answered nothing. For that last question she had no heart to answer; no heart to tell him that in her veins were some drops, at least, of the blood of slaves. Instinctively she had looked round at the mirror--for might he not, if he had eyes, discover that secret for himself? Were there not in her features traces of that taint? And as she looked,--was it the mere play of her excited fancy,--or did her eyelid slope more and more, her nostril shorten and curl, her lips enlarge, her mouth itself protrude?