among his superstitious fellows had, thereupon, prophesied that the
new-born babe would end its life by violence.

"It is time I should quit the house," she muttered, drawing her veil
over her eyes, of which the lids nervously trembled. "I cannot hear
those pop-guns without consternation."

She hurried forth without a regret, and passed, as a hundred times
before, the family vault in the cemetery, where her murdered infant
reposed, without a farewell glance, although she might never see the
place again.

On coming within sight of the station, she perceived a solitary figure,
that of a man, in a fashionable caped cloak, crossing the fields in the
same direction as hers. It was probably the viscount going to it
separately in order not to compromise her and give a clue to the true
cause of her flight.

Sometimes the unexpected comes to the help of the wicked. Incredible as
it appeared, she received, on the eve of her departure, a telegram from
Paris. At first she thought it a device of Viscount Gratian's to cover
her elopement, but it was not possible for him to have imagined the
appeal. It was from her uncle, who, traveling in France, and intending
to pay her a visit since she was married honorably, was stricken with a
malady. He awaited her at a hotel. Even Von Sendlingen could not have
drawn up this message too simple not to be genuine and too precise in
the genealogical allusions not to be a Russian's and a Dobronowska's.

She regarded this cloak as the act of her "fate"--the evil person's
providence. She handed the paper to Hedwig to be given to her husband as