follows:

'"Maude Cibras.--You may come here to-night after dark. Walk to the
south side of the house, come up the steps to the balcony, and pass in
through the open window to my room. Remember, however, that you have
nothing to expect from me, and that from to-night I blot you eternally
from my mind: but I will hear your story, which I know beforehand to be
false. Destroy this note. PHARANX."'

As I progressed with my tale, I came to notice that over the
countenance of Prince Zaleski there grew little by little a singular
fixed aspect. His small, keen features distorted themselves into an
expression of what I can only describe as an abnormal _inquisitiveness_
--an inquisitiveness most impatient, arrogant, in its intensity.
His pupils, contracted each to a dot, became the central _puncta_
of two rings of fiery light; his little sharp teeth seemed to
gnash. Once before I had seen him look thus greedily, when, grasping a
Troglodyte tablet covered with half-effaced hieroglyphics--his fingers
livid with the fixity of his grip--he bent on it that strenuous
inquisition, that ardent questioning gaze, till, by a species of
mesmeric dominancy, he seemed to wrench from it the arcanum it hid from
other eyes; then he lay back, pale and faint from the too arduous
victory.

When I had read Lord Pharanx's letter, he took the paper eagerly from
my hand, and ran his eyes over the passage.

'Tell me--the end,' he said.

'Maude Cibras,' I went on, 'thus invited to a meeting with the earl,