"Such love--the love of a guilty, wicked woman like you, Madame Lorraine--leaves one no choice but death!" CHAPTER XIX. He never forgot the glare of rage the angry woman fixed upon him for a moment. Her eyes fairly blazed as she hissed, vindictively: "You have made your choice, and mine is the last human face you will look upon. A few days of isolation in this dreary chamber, without food or drink, and you will go mad with horror and die of starvation. Adieu, monsieur. I wish you _bon voyage_ to Hades!" She made him a mocking courtesy, and swept to the door, tearing it open with such impetuous haste that the listener outside had no time to step aside, only to spring up wildly and confront the angry woman, who immediately uttered a shriek of horror and fled up the narrow stair-way, disappearing through the secret door in an incredibly short space of time. In the darkness of the narrow passage she had taken the pale-faced, wild-eyed girl for a visitant from the other world, and had fled in fear and terror from the supposed ghostly presence. In her terror she had forgotten to shut the door upon Van Zandt, and with starting eyes he witnessed the strange scene. For an instant he fancied, like Mme. Lorraine, that it was a spirit standing there in the gloom of the narrow passage, with face and form like that of the dead little Mlle. Nobody. Then reason came to his aid. He sprung from the sofa, and just as the secret door shut behind the frightened madame, he caught the girl's cold hand and drew her into the room. "Oh, my little ma'amselle! So that wicked woman lied when she told me that you were dead!" he exclaimed. She answered, vivaciously: "No; for I have been dead and buried since I saw you, Monsieur Van Zandt. Don't you see that Madame Lorraine took me for a ghost? It was very fortunate for me, was it not?" and soft, sweet trills of laughter bubbled over her lips. In her joy at finding him again, she forgot hunger, fear, and weariness. And in her excitement and exhilaration she rapidly poured out all that had happened to her since that night, nearly two weeks ago, when he and Carmontelle had so ably prevented her abduction by Remond. He listened in deepest interest; and if Mme. Lorraine could have seen the joy that sparkled in his expressive eyes, she would have felt like plunging a dagger into the white breast of the girl who had brought that joy there by her return, as it were, from the dead. He laughed with her at the idea of Mme. Lorraine having fooled herself so cleverly in imagining Little Nobody a ghost. "But you must not call me Little Nobody any longer. I am Marie now," she said, brightly. "It is a sweet, pretty name," he replied; "but I wish I had been permitted to choose your name. It should have been something else--something unique, like yourself." She did not know what the word unique meant. She looked at him curiously. "What would you have called me?" she queried.