union in which there can be no happiness."

"It is too late," said Isaura, with hollow tones, but with no trace of
vacillating weakness on her brow and lips. "Did I say now to that other
one, 'I break the faith that I pledged to you,' I should kill him, body
and soul. Slight thing though I be, to him I am all in all; to you, Mr.
Vane, to you a memory--the memory of one whom a year, perhaps a month,
hence, you will rejoice to think you have escaped."

She passed from him--passed away from the flowers and the starlight; and
when Graham,--recovering from the stun of her crushing words, and with
the haughty mien and stop of the man who goes forth from the ruin of his
hopes, leaning for support upon his pride,--when Graham re-entered the
room, all the guests had departed save only Alain, who was still
exchanging whispered words with Valerie.




CHAPTER IV.

The next day, at the hour appointed, Graham entered Alain's apartment.
"I am glad to tell you," said the Marquis, gaily, "that the box has
arrived, and we will very soon examine its contents. Breakfast claims
precedence." During the meal Alain was in gay spirits, and did not at
first notice the gloomy countenance and abstracted mood of his guest. At
length, surprised at the dull response to his lively sallies on the part
of a man generally so pleasant in the frankness of his speech, and the
cordial ring of his sympathetic laugh, it occurred to him that the change
in Graham must be ascribed to something that had gone wrong in the