notwithstanding that lady's marked reserve and discouragement, in
chatting away, as if she were conscious that her conversation was the
most welcome entertainment possible to her really unwilling auditor. No
one of their interviews did she ever suffer to close without in some way
or other suggesting or insinuating something mysterious and untold to the
prejudice of Mr. Marston. Those vague and intangible hints, the meaning
of which, for an instant legible and terrific, seemed in another moment
to dissolve and disappear, tortured Mrs. Marston like the intrusion of a
specter; and this, along with the portentous change, rather felt than
visible, in mademoiselle's conduct toward her, invested the beautiful
Frenchwoman, in the eyes of her former friend and patroness, with an
indefinable character that was not only repulsive but formidable.

Mrs. Marston's feelings with respect to this person were still further
disturbed by the half-conveyed hints and innuendoes of her own maid, who
never lost an opportunity of insinuating her intense dislike of the
Frenchwoman, and appeared perpetually to be upon the very verge of making
some explicit charges, or some shocking revelations, respecting her,
which, however, she as invariably evaded; and even when Mrs. Marston once
or twice insisted upon her explaining her meaning distinctly, she eluded
her mistress's desire, and left her still in the same uneasy uncertainty.

Marston, on his part, however much his conduct might tend to confirm
suspicion, certainly did nothing to dissipate the painful and undefined
apprehension respecting himself, which Mademoiselle de Barras, with such
malign and mysterious industry, labored to raise. His spirits and temper
were liable to strange fluctuations. In the midst of that excited gaiety,
to which, until lately, he had been so long a stranger, would sometimes
intervene paroxysms of the blackest despair, all the ghastlier for the
contrast, and with a suddenness so abrupt and overwhelming, that one