to the fatal entry in the album which she still grasps; and asks her
friend--after quoting the writer's words--how, but in her own way, the
mouth of such a one could have been stopped.

"So," exclaims the youth. And he flies at the man's throat, and
strangles him.

She has only time to thank her deliverer; to tell him why his devotion
is unavailing--to provide for his safety by writing in the album from
which he has torn the fatal page, that he has slain a man who would have
outraged her: and that her last breath is spent in blessing him.

A merry voice is heard; and the young, light-hearted girl comes all
unconscious to the scene of the tragedy. The curtain falls before she
has entered upon it.

The betrayal of the lady, the transaction of which she becomes the
subject, and her consequent suicide, are taken from an episode in
English high life, which occurred in the present century.


"THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC" is an extract from the history of two writers
of verse, whose respective works obtained from circumstances a brilliant
but short-lived renown. It forms part of a reminiscence, supposed to be
conjured up by a wood fire near which the narrator, with his wife, is
sitting. The fire, as he describes it, is made of ship-wood: for it
burns in all the beautiful colours which denote the presence of metallic
substances and salts; and as his fancy reconstructs the ship, it also
raises the vision of a distant coast well known to his companion and to
himself. He sees Le Croisic--the little town it is--the poor village it