Carmontelle turned to his friend. "Poor Una!" he said; "it is no wonder she fled in dismay, after hearing such a tale of horror. Come, let us go. We have heard all that madame's malignity can invent to torture two loving hearts, and the only task that remains to us is to prove it false." "Which you will never do!" she exclaimed, with triumphant malice. "Time will prove," he retorted, as he led the agitated Van Zandt out of the house, ignoring the ceremony of adieus to its mistress. But his face grew very grave once they gained the darkness of the street. To himself he said, in alarm: "Can her tale be true? It sounded very plausible." To Eliot he said: "I shall put this affair in the hands of one who will sift it to the bottom. Then, if Madame Remond has lied to us, she shall suffer for her sin." "Poor Una! my poor little Una! How she must have suffered, bearing this bitter knowledge alone!" Eliot said, and a bursting sigh heaved his tortured breast. "She was a wise little girl, at all events," Carmontelle answered, gravely. "Of course, if madame's tale be true, there was no other way proper for either, cruel as it seems to say it." Eliot had no answer ready, but in his heart he knew that his friend spoke truly. Better, far better, that he and Una should suffer than to throw the blighting disgrace of his wife's parentage upon unborn descendants of the proud name of Van Zandt. He could hardly share the incredulity of Carmontelle. Madame's story had been so plausible it had shaken his doubts. Now, indeed, it seemed to him that all hope was over. He and Una were indeed parted forever. He went back to the Magnolias with his friend, and excusing himself from all society, went up to his room alone. He spent some time leaning from the window, his sad gaze roving over the moonlit city, thinking of Una, his lost bride, so near him that an hour's rapid walking would have borne him to her side, but sundered so widely apart from him by sorrow. There came to him in the stillness a memory of the song he had sung to her so often, and which she had loved so well, "The Two Little Lives." How well it fitted now! "Ah! for the morrow bringeth such sorrow, Captured the lark was, and life grew dim; There, too, the daisy torn from the way-side, Prisoned and dying wept for him Once more the lark sung; fainter his voice grew; Her little song was hushed and o'er; Two little lives gone out of the sunshine, Out of this bright world for evermore." "Poor little daisy!" Eliot sighed; then, bitterly, "Ah, if we had but died in prison that time, how blessed we should have been--never having this cruel knowledge to break our hearts!"