"Why do you ask me?" said Harriet. "Why do you tremble?" rejoined Alice, with an eager look. "His usage made a Devil of me. Isunk in wretchedness and ruin, lower and lower yet. I was concerned in a robbery-in every part of it but the gains-and was found out, and sent to be tried, without a friend, without a penny. Though I was but a girl, I would have gone to Death sooner than ask him for a word, if a word of his could have saved

me.

I would! To any death that could have been invented. But my mother, covetous always, sent to him in my name, told the true story of my case, and humbly prayed and petitioned for a small last giftfor not so many pounds as I have fingers on this hand. Who was it, do you think, who snapped his fingers at me in my misery, lying, as he believed, at his feet, and left me, without even this poor sign of remembrance; well satisfied that I should be sent abroad, beyond the reach of further trouble to him, and should die, and rot there? Who was this, do you think?"

"Why do you ask me ?" repeated Harriet.

"Why do you tremble?" said Alice, laying her hand upon her arm, and looking in her face, "but that the answer is on your lips! It was your brother James."

Harriet trembled more and more, but did not avert her eyes from the eager look that rested on them.

"When I knew you were his sister-which was on that night-I came back, weary and lame, to spurn your gift. I felt that night as if I could have traveled, weary and lame, over the whole world, to stab him, if I could have found him in a lonely place with no one near. Do you believe that I was in earnest in all that?"

"I do! Good Heaven, why are you come again?" "Since then," said Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same look in her face, "I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes in the broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it sprung into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has wronged a proud man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given information of him to that man?" "Information!" repeated Harriet.

"What if I had found out one who knew your brother's secret; who knew the manner of his flight;

"Dreadful!" said Harriet.

"Then when you see me now," said Alice, hoarsely, "here again, kneeling quietly on the ground, with my touch upon your arm, with my eyes upon your face, you may believe that there is no common earnestness in what I say, and that no common struggle has been battling in my breast. I am ashamed to speak the words, but I relent. I despise myself; I have fought with myself all day, and all last night; but I relent toward him without reason, and wish to repair what I have done, if it is possible. I wouldn't have them come together while his pursuer is so blind and headlong. If you had seen him as he went out last night, you would know the danger better."

"How shall it be prevented! What can I do!" cried Harriet.

"All night long," pursued the other, hurriedly, "I had dreams of him—and yet I didn't sleep-in his blood. All day I have had him near me."

"What can I do!" cried Harriet, shuddering at these words.

"If there is any one who'll write, or send, or go to him, let them lose no time. He is at Dijon. Do you know the name, and where it is ?"

"Yes."

"Warn him that the man he has made his enemy is in a frenzy, and that he doesn't know him if he makes light of his approach. Tell him that he is on the road-I know he is!-and hurrying on. Urge him to get away while there is time-if there is time -and not to meet him yet. A month or so will make years of difference. Let them not encounter, through me. Anywhere but there! Any time but now! Let his foe follow him, and find him for himself, but not through me! There is enough upon my head without."

The fire ceased to be reflected in her jet-black hair, uplifted face, and eager eyes; her hand was gone from Harriet's arm; and the place where she had been was empty.

CHAPTER LIV.

THE FUGITIVES.

were gone? What if I had made him utter all his knowledge, word by word, before his enemy, concealed to hear it? What if I had sat by at the time, looking into this enemy's face, and seeing it change till it was scarcely human? What if I had seen him rush away, mad, in pursuit? What if I knew now that he was on his road, more fiend than man, and must, in so many hours, come up with him?”

"Remove your hand!" said Harriet, recoiling. "Go away! Your touch is dreadful to me!"

"I have done this," pursued the other, with her eager look, regardless of the interruption. "Do I speak and look as if I really had? Do you believe what I am saying?"

"I fear I must. Let my arm go!" "Not yet. A moment more.

You can think what

my revengeful purpose must have been, to last so long, and urge me to do this?"

French Apartment, comprising some half-dozen rooms;-a dull cold hall or corridor, a dining-room, a drawing-room, a bed-chamber, and an inner drawing-room, or boudoir, smaller and more retired than the rest. All these shut in by one large pair of doors on the main staircase, but each room provided with two or three pairs of doors of its own, establishing several means of communication with the remaining portion of the apartment, or with certain small passages within the wall, leading, as is not unusual in such houses, to some back stairs with an obscure outlet below. The whole situated on the first floor of so large a Hotel, that it did not absorb one entire row of windows upon one side of the square court-yard in the centre, upon which the whole four sides of the mansion looked.

An air of splendor, sufficiently faded to be melancholy, and sufficiently dazzling to clog and embarrass the details of life with a show of state, reigned

in these rooms. The walls and ceilings were gilded and painted; the floors were waxed and polished; crimson drapery hung in festoons from window, door, and mirror; candelabra, gnarled and intertwisted, like the branches of trees, or horns of animals, stuck out from the panels of the wall. But in the day-time, when the lattice-blinds (now closely shut) were opened, and the light let in, traces were discernible among this finery, of wear and tear and dust, of sun and damp and smoke, and lengthened intervals of want of use and habitation, when such shows and toys of life seem sensitive like life, and waste as men shut up in prison do. Even night, and clusters of burning candles, could not wholly efface them, though the general glitter threw them in the shade.

The glitter of bright tapers, and their reflection in looking-glasses, scraps of gilding and gay colors, were confined, on this night, to one room-that smaller room within the rest, just now enumerated. Seen from the hall, where a lamp was feebly burning, through the dark perspective of open doors, it looked as shining and precious as a gem. In the heart of its radiance sat a beautiful woman-Edith.

She was alone. The same defiant, scornful woman still. The cheek a little worn, the eye a little larger in appearance, and more lustrous, but the haughty bearing just the same. No shame upon her brow; no late repentance bending her disdainful neck. Imperious and stately yet, and yet regardless of herself and of all else, she sat with her dark eyes cast down, waiting for some one.

No book, no work, no occupation of any kind but her own thoughts, beguiled the tardy time. Some purpose, strong enough to fill up any pause, possessed her. With her lips pressed together, and quivering if for a moment she released them from her control; with her nostril inflated; her hands clasped in one another; and her purpose swelling in her breast; she sat, and waited.

At the sound of a key in the outer door, and a footstep in the hall, she started up, and cried "Who's that?" The answer was in French, and two men came in with jingling trays, to make preparation for supper.

"Who had bade them to do so?" she asked.

"Monsieur had commanded it, when it was his pleasure to take the apartment. Monsieur had said, when he staid there for an hour, en route, and left the letter for madame-madame had received it surely?"

"Yes."

"A thousand pardons! The sudden apprehension that it might have been forgotten had struck him;" a bald man with a large beard from a neighboring restaurant: "with despair! Monsieur had said that supper was to be ready at that hour: also that he had forewarned madame of the commands he had given, in his letter. Monsieur had done the Golden Head the honor to request that the supper should be choice and delicate. Monsieur would find that his confidence in the Golden Head was not misplaced."

Edith said no more, but looked on thoughtfully while they prepared the table for two persons, and set the wine upon it. She arose before they had finished, and, taking a lamp, passed into the bed

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chamber and into the drawing-room, where she hurriedly but narrowly examined all the doors; particularly one in the former room that opened on the passage in the wall. From this she took the key, and put it on the outer side. She then came back.

The men the second of whom was a dark, bilious subject, in a jacket, close shaved, and with a black head of hair close cropped-had completed their preparation of the table, and were standing looking at it. He who had spoken before, inquired whether madame thought it would be long before monsieur arrived?

"She couldn't say. It was all one."

"Pardon! There was the supper! It should be eaten on the instant. Monsieur (who spoke French like an Angel or a Frenchman-it was all the same) had spoken with great emphasis of his punctuality. But the English nation had so grand a genius for punctuality. Ah! what noise! Great Heaven, here was monsieur. Behold him!"

In effect, monsieur, admitted by the other of the two, came, with his gleaming teeth, through the dark rooms, like a mouth; and arriving in that sanctuary of light and color, a figure at full length, embraced madame, and addressed her in the French tongue as his charming wife.

"My God! Madame is going to faint. Madame is overcome with joy!" The bald man with the beard observed it, and cried out.

Madame had only shrunk and shivered. Before the words were spoken, she was standing with her hand upon the velvet back of a great chair; her figure drawn up to its full height, and her face immorable.

François has flown over to the Golden Head for supper. He flies on these occasions like an angel or a bird. The baggage of monsieur is in his room. All is arranged. The supper will be here this moment." These facts the bald man notified with bows and smiles, and presently the supper came.

The hot dishes were on a chafing-dish; the cold already set forth, with the change of service on a sideboard. Monsieur was satisfied with this arrangement. The supper-table being small, it pleased him very well. Let them set the chafing-dish upon the floor, and go. He would remove the dishes with his own hands.

"Pardon!” said the bald man, politely. "It was impossible!"

Monsieur was of another opinion. He required no further attendance that night.

"But madame-" the bald man hinted. "Madame," replied monsieur," had her own maid. It was enough."

"A million pardons! No! Madame had no maid!" "I came here alone," said Edith. "It was my choice to do so. I am well used to traveling; I want no attendance. They need send nobody to me."

Monsieur accordingly, persevering in his first proposed impossibility, proceeded to follow the two attendants to the outer door, and secure it after them for the night. The bald man turning round to bow, as he went out, observed that madame still stood with her hand upon the velvet back of the great chair, and that her face was quite regardless of him, though she was looking straight before her.

As the sound of Carker's fastening the door resounded through the intermediate rooms, and seemed to come hushed and stifled into that last distant one, the sound of the Cathedral clock striking twelve mingled with it, in Edith's ears. She heard him pause, as if he heard it too and listened; and then came back toward her, laying a long train of footsteps through the silence, and shutting all the doors behind him as he came along. Her hand for a moment left the velvet chair to bring a knife within her reach upon the table; then she stood as she had stood before.

cult (as you are the most beautiful, my love) of women."

Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand resting on the chair, and said not a word.

"I have never," resumed Carker, "seen you look so handsome as you do to-night. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel probation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by the reality."

Not a word. Not a look. Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping lashes, but her head held "Hard, unrelenting terms they were!" said Car

"What?" she returned.

Her tone was so harsh; the quick turn of her head so fierce; her attitude so repellent; and her frown so black, that he stood, with the lamp in his hand, looking at her, as if she had struck him motionless.

"I say," he at length repeated, putting down the lamp, and smiling his most courtly smile, "how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessary caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have engaged an attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for the purpose, though you had been the most capricious and diffi

ker, with a smile, "but they are all fulfilled and passed, and make the present more delicious and more safe. Sicily shall be the place of our retreat. In the idlest and easiest part of the world, my soul, we'll both seek compensation for old slavery."

He was coming gayly toward her, when, in an instant, she caught the knife up from the table, and started one pace back.

"Stand still!" she said, " or I shall murder you!"

The sudden change in her, the towering fury and intense abhorrence sparkling in her eyes and lighting up her brow made him stop as if a fire had stopped him.

"Stand still!" she said, "come no nearer me, upon your life!"

They both stood looking at each other. Rage and astonishment were in his face, but he controlled them, and said, lightly,

"Come, come! Tush, we are alone, and out of every body's sight and hearing. Do you think to frighten me with these tricks of virtue ?"

"Do you think to frighten me," she answered fiercely," from any purpose that I have, and any course I am resolved upon, by reminding me of the solitude of this place, and there being no help near? Me, who am here alone, designedly? If I feared you, should I not have avoided you? If I feared you, should I be here, in the dead of night, telling you to your face what I am going to tell ?"

"And what is that," he said, "you handsome shrew? Handsomer so than any other woman in her best humor?"

"I tell you nothing," she returned, "until you go back to that chair-except this, once again-Don't come near me! Not a step nearer. I tell you, if you do, as Heaven sees us, I shall murder you!"

"Do you mistake me for your husband?" he retorted, with a grin.

Disdaining to reply, she stretched her arm out, pointing to a chair. He bit his lip, frowned, laughed, and sat down in it, with a baffled, irresolute, impatient air he was unable to conceal, and biting his nail nervously, and looking at her sideways, with bitter discomfiture, even while he feigned to be amused by her caprice.

She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom with her hand, said:

"I have something lying here that is no love trinket; and sooner than endure your touch once more, I would use it on you-and you know it, while I speak -with less reluctance than I would on any other creeping thing that lives."

He affected to laugh jestingly, and entreated her to act her play out quickly, for the supper was growing cold. But the secret look with which he regarded her was more sullen and lowering, and he struck his foot once upon the floor with a muttered oath.

"How many times," said Edith, bending her darkest glance upon him, "has your bold knavery assailed me with outrage and insult? How many times in your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks, have I been twitted with my courtship and my marriage? How many times have you laid bare my wound of love for that sweet, injured girl, and lacerated it? How often have you fanned the fire on which, for two years, I have writhed, and tempted me to take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me ?"

"I have no doubt, ma'am," he replied, "that you have kept a good account, and that it's pretty accurate. Come, Edith. To your husband, poor wretch, this was well enough-"

"Why, if," she said, surveying him with a haughty contempt and disgust that he shrunk under, let him brave it as he would, "if all my other reasons for despising him could have been blown away like feathers, his having you for his counselor and favorite would have almost been enough to hold their place."

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"Is that a reason why you have run away with me?" he asked her, tauntingly.

"Yes, and why we are face to face for the last time. Wretch! We meet to-night, and part tonight. For not one moment after I have ceased to speak, will I stay here!"

He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and griped the table with his hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her.

"I am a woman," she said, confronting him steadfastly, "who from her very childhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and rejected, put up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have not had an accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to me, but it has been paraded and vended to enhance my value, as if the common crier had called it through the streets. My poor, proud friends have looked on and approved; and every tie between us has been deadened in my breast. There is not one of them for whom I care as I could care for a pet dog. I stand alone in the world, remembering well what a hollow world it has been to me, and what a hollow part of it I have been myself. You know this, and you know that my fame with it is worthless to me." "Yes; I imagined that," he said.

"And calculated on it," she rejoined, "and so pursued me. Grown too indifferent for any opposition but indifference, to the daily working of the hands that had molded me to this; and knowing that my marriage would at least prevent their hawking of me up and down, I suffered myself to be sold as infamously as any woman with a halter round her neck is sold in any market-place. You know that."

"Yes," he said, showing all his teeth. "I know that."

"And calculated on it," she rejoined once more, "and so pursued me. From my marriage-day, I found myself exposed to such new shame-to such solicitation and pursuit (expressed as clearly as if it had been written in the coarsest words, and thrust into my hand at every turn) from one mean villain, that I felt as if I had never known humiliation till that time. This shame my husband fixed upon me; hemmed me round with, himself; steeped me in, with his own hands, and of his own act, repeated hundreds of times. And thus-forced by the two from every point of rest I had-forced by the two to yield up the last retreat of love and gentleness within me, or to be a new misfortune on its innocent objectdriven from each to each, and beset by one when I escaped the other-my anger rose almost to distraction against both. I do not know against which it rose higher-the master or the man!"

He watched her closely, as she stood before him in the very triumph of her indignant beauty. She was resolute, he saw; undauntable; with no more fear of him than of a worm.

"What should I say of honor or chastity to you!" she went on. "What meaning would it have to you; what meaning would it have from me! But if I tell you that the lightest touch of your hand makes my blood cold with antipathy; that from the hour when I first saw and hated you to now, when my instinctive repugnance is enhanced by every minute's knowledge of you I have since had, you have been a