with each naming of herself--"who told Semifonte where he could lay
hands upon his chattel. You believed it was the count--it was I!"
Quivering, breathing fire and anger, beautiful as a goddess and wicked
as a fiend--what was I to say to this terrible witness? She had stayed
for lack of breath, panting, tapping her foot, her bosom heaving like
the sea under her close arms--and I was face to face with her, alone,
with ruin between us. So with a stamp of her little foot, so with a
flick of the fingers, it seems, she had broken her own image and killed
love outright. There and then love died, and his funeral knell was the
horrid barking laughter with which I greeted this end of her story.

"Madam," I said, when I had laughed hatefully and long, "I have robbed
you of a lover, and you, in return, have robbed me of my love. You ought
to be as much obliged to me as I am to you."

She scowled at me darkly. I think she would have stabbed me gladly, but
just then the warder entered with my servant, and an official from the
palace. This latter, with a profound salutation, handed me a letter from
the count. Asking leave, I opened it and read as follows:

MY DEAR DON FRANCIS,--I have just learned, with concern, that you are in
prison upon two charges--one false, and another which is trumpery. I
hasten to assure you that orders have been given which will satisfy your
sense of justice, and, I hope, improve your opinion of myself. I believe
that by this time you will have been assured that it was not I who
betrayed your confidences to Semifonte--who, between you and me, has got
his deserts, or (according to the orthodox) must now be getting them. As
for my more recent offence--the real ground of our little encounter--I
can assure you of this, that if I ever make any such assertion again,
and you again call me a liar, I shall not resent it; for a liar I shall