“You will recollect, madam, that accident made me acquainted with certain circumstances connected with yourself and Mr. Cleveland. Alas! actuated by the vilest of sentiments, I conceived a violent hatred against that gentleman, a hatred only to be equalled by my passion for you; but I find difficulty in dwelling upon the details of this sad story of jealousy and despair.” “Oh! speak, speak! compensate for all you have done by your present frankness; be brief, be brief.” “I will be brief,” said Vivian, with earnestness: “I will be brief. Know then, madam, that in order to prevent the intercourse between you and Mr. Cleveland from proceeding I obtained his friendship, and became the confidante of his heart’s sweetest secret. Thus situated, I suppressed the letters with which I was entrusted from him to you, and, poisoning his mind, I accounted for your silence by your being employed in other correspondence; nay, I did more; with the malice of a fiend, I boasted of--; nay, do not stop me; I have more to tell.” Mrs. Felix Lorraine, with compressed lips and looks of horrible earnestness, gazed in silence. “The result of all this you know; but the most terrible part is to come; and, by a strange fascination, I fly to confess my crimes at your feet, even while the last minutes have witnessed my most heinous one. Oh! madam. I have stood over the bier of the departed; I have mingled my tears with those of the sorrowing widower, his young and tender child was on my knee, and as I kissed his innocent lips, me thought it was but my duty to the departed to save the father from his mother’s rival--” He stopped. “Yes, yes, yes,” said Mrs. Felix Lorraine, in a low whisper. “It was then, even then, in the hour of his desolation, that I mentioned your name, that it might the more disgust him; and while he wept over his virtuous and sainted wife, I dwelt on the vices of his rejected mistress.” Mrs. Lorraine clasped her hands, and moved restlessly on her seat. “Nay! do not stop me; let me tell all. ‘Cleveland,’ said I, ‘if ever you become the husband of Mrs. Felix Lorraine, remember my last words: it will be well for you if your frame be like that of Mithridates of Pontus, and proof against ---- poison.’” “And did you say this?” shrieked the woman. “Even these were my words.” “Then may all evil blast you!” She threw herself on the sofa; her voice was choked with the convulsions of her passion, and she writhed in fearful agony. Vivian Grey, lounging in an arm-chair in the easiest of postures, and with a face brilliant with smiles, watched his victim with the eye of a Mephistopheles. She slowly recovered, and, with a broken voice, poured forth her sacred absolution to the relieved penitent.