yielding waist. The two lovers gazed at each other's faces in
unspeakable bliss. Suddenly Selina started.

"Leave me, Edgardo! leave me! A mysterious something--a fatal
misgiving--a dark ambiguity--an equivocal mistrust oppresses me. I
would be alone!"

The young man arose, and cast a loving glance on the lady. "Then
we will be married on the seventeenth."

"The seventeenth," repeated Selina, with a mysterious shudder.

They embraced and parted. As the clatter of hoofs in the court-
yard died away, the Lady Selina sank into the chair she had just
quitted.

"The seventeenth," she repeated slowly, with the same fateful
shudder. "Ah!--what if he should know that I have another husband
living? Dare I reveal to him that I have two legitimate and three
natural children? Dare I repeat to him the history of my youth?
Dare I confess that at the age of seven I poisoned my sister, by
putting verdigris in her cream-tarts,--that I threw my cousin from
a swing at the age of twelve? That the lady's-maid who incurred
the displeasure of my girlhood now lies at the bottom of the horse-
pond? No! no! he is too pure,--too good,--too innocent, to hear
such improper conversation!" and her whole body writhed as she
rocked to and fro in a paroxysm of grief.

But she was soon calm. Rising to her feet, she opened a secret
panel in the wall, and revealed a slow-match ready for lighting.