“She was poor and ambitious, as I said just now, and her mind was made up to sell her beauty for a rich husband; but a poor fool fell in love with her, and when she refused to have anything to say to him, he pretended to be rich and of good birth. The beauty snapped at the glittering bait, and married him, expecting to go at once to a magnificent palace on Fifth Avenue. The young husband was fool enough to think she loved him a little and would forgive him when she found out he was poor. But, alas, for his hopes! The very hour of her marriage she left him forever, giving way to undisguised scorn at his poverty, and vowing she would never live with him.” “What did he do then?” asked Beatrix, opening her black eyes with wonder. “He haunted her like a shadow for a few weeks, alternately begging for her forgiveness and threatening to enforce her wifely obedience; but she was obstinate, and still refused to forgive him. Then her mother, with whom she had taken refuge, died quite suddenly, and soon after the girl disappeared. She went to the bad, Miss Consani; flung away her life to avenge herself on the husband who had won her by a trick, and to gratify her greed for gold.” “Oh, how dreadful!” the pretty Italian exclaimed, with a shudder. “She was a wretch, for all her beauty.” His eyes gleamed luridly at her words, and his dark face gloomed over strangely. He did not speak, and the girl continued: “What did her husband do then, prince?” “When he found out that she was irrevocably lost to him in such a horrible fashion, he went mad with despair, and committed suicide, drowning himself in the East River.” “Oh, how sad, how romantic!” exclaimed Beatrix. “He did not do right in deceiving her, but as it was for the sake of his great love, I pity him. He was better than she was, for his love was some excuse for his sin. I wonder if she repented when she found out that he had drowned himself for her sake?” “I do not know. I have never heard anything more about her, but I should think, from what I know of her, that she was probably glad when she heard that she had driven him to suicide,” returned the prince bitterly, and presently he took leave, having promised Beatrix that he would not fail to attend the wedding to-morrow. And he kept his promise, for the names of the plighted pair had awakened in him a painful interest. “It can be nothing but a coincidence,” he muttered gloomily, as he walked along. “Still, I should judge that it’s the same man whose hated name I have such bitter cause to remember. She loved him, I think, for she would draw me on to talk of him, and her eyes would shine, her cheeks redden at his name. It was the one charm I had for her, that I would tell her lies by the hour about the man who saved her life. I wonder if she ever saw him again? I wonder what was her fate, and if the bullet I have carried for her for years will ever find its way to her heart?”