him as he came along. Her hand, for a moment, left the velvet chair to bring a knife within her reach upon the table; then she stood as she had stood before.

`How strange to come here by yourself, my love!' he said as he entered.

`What?' she returned.

Her tone was so harsh; the quick turn of her head so fierce; her attitude so repellent; and her frown so black; that he stood, with the lamp in his hand, looking at her, as if she had struck him motionless.

`I say,' he at length repeated, putting down the lamp, and smiling his most courtly smile, `how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessary caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have engaged an attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for the purpose, though you had been the most capricious and difficult (as you are the most beautiful, my love) of women.'

Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand resting on the chair, and said not a word.

`I have never,' resumed Carker, `seen you look so handsome, as you do to-night. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel probation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by the reality.'

Not a word. Not a look. Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping lashes, but her head held up.

`Hard, unrelenting terms they were!'said Carker, with a smile, `but they are all fulfilled and passed, and make the present more delicious and more safe. Sicily shall be the place of our retreat. In the idlest and easiest part of the world, my soul, we'll both seek compensation for old slavery.'

He was coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant, she caught the knife up from the table, and started one pace back.

`Stand still' she said, `or I shall murder you!'

The sudden change in her, the towering fury and intense abhorrence sparkling in her eyes and lighting up her brow, made him stop as if a fire had stopped him.

`Stand still!' she said, `come no nearer me, upon your life!'

They both stood looking at each other. Rage and astonishment were in his face, but he controlled them and said lightly,

`Come, come! Tush, we are alone, and out of everybody's sight and hearing. Do you think to frighten me with these tricks of virtue?'

`Do you think to frighten me,' she answered fiercely, `from any purpose that I have, and any course I am resolved upon, by reminding me of the solitude of this place, and there being no help near? Me, who am here alone, designedly? If I feared you, should I not have avoided you? If I feared you, should I be here, in the dead of night, telling you to your face what I am going to tell?'

`And what is that,' he said, `you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than any other woman in her best humour?'

`I tell you nothing,' she returned, `until you go back to that chair--except this, once again--Don't come near me! Not a step nearer. I tell you, if you do, as heaven sees us, I shall murder you!'

`Do you mistake me for your husband?' he retorted, with a grin.