moved Faustine from him, and said, in a menacing tone— "Faustine !"

'She sank into a chair. Her tears flowed fast, and there was an indescribable air of suffering in her whole frame. Mario had not the power to leave her, although at the first moment he had made a movement towards the door. He knelt before her, and said: "Faustine, how can you tell such an untruth?

"I tell no untruth," she murmured, without looking up. ""Look in my face, firmly and quietly, and now answer me-Do you not love me, Faustine?"

""No!" said she, in a hardly audible tone; but unconsciously her eyes rested on him with such heavenly tenderness, that he exclaimed, enchanted-" Your sweet deceitful lips speak false! your eyes say yes, and I believe them.”

"No, no!" she exclaimed, in increasing agony, and held both hands before her eyes; "do not mind the treacherous eyes; the lips speak the truth."

"Faustine," said Mengen, rising up, and his angry voice grew more terrifying from the tremulousness which excitement threw into it; "if you do not love me; if all has been but trifling-the amusement of an idle hour: if you have lavished the whole fascination of your nature as a vulgar coquetry if you have accustomed yourself to such a disregard of the feelings of others, as to anatomise living, beating, bleeding hearts, for your instruction or your sport, then I have no expression for my contempt."

""Mario!" shrieked Faustine, and sank upon "I love you!"

her knees,

She now gives him the history of her life. She was married young to a commonplace man, Count Obernau. She felt no love for him, and, before she became his wife, she told him so; but he assured her that the required feeling would come in good time, and that they

should do very well together if it did not. But everything about him was repelling to her sensitive impulsive character, and she naturally enough caught at the first offer of sympathy. An attachment grew up between Baron von Andlau and herself, not discouraged by her husband, who had begun to get tired of her, and thought her incapable of loving anyone, since she had failed to love him. Set on by his sister, however, he took to watching them, and soon surprised them in an attitude. of tenderness, which, though not quite irreconcilable with purity, was certainly calculated to put the most philosophical husband's philosophy to the test. Obernau runs for his pistol, and insists on Andlau's fighting him. Andlau retained his composure, conjured him to spare me, and not make a public scandal; whilst I stood like a statue, deprived of speech, thought, and reflection; nor did I recover my faculties until a pistol shot was discharged, and Andlau fell at my feet. Then I knew what I had to do! I ordered horses, conveyed him to his own house, sent for surgeons, and stayed with him. Obernau, the whole world, were nothing to me from that hour.' The husband pressed her to return; 'I will never,' she replied, 'return to the house of a man who has degraded himself and me in the eyes of the world.' He, on his part, refuses to consent to a divorce, and when, two years after the breach, he dies, she herself declines becoming the wife of Andlau, from a fantastic aversion to a tie which had made her so miserable.

"I thank you," said Mengen, "for unveiling your destiny to me, and doubly do I thank you, since I see nothing in it to separate us."

'Faustine looked up at him without speaking, and passed her hand across her eyes, as if to convince herself that she was awake.

"Nothing! for you love me, and Andlau―you love no longer; for, if you still loved him, your eye would never have alighted on me with any other than the indifferent friendly glance you have for everybody."

"Oh, then, I am miserably false !" said she, in a hollow voice.

"And what would you be if you remained standing between two men, fascinating both, belonging half to each, wholly to neither? And what would you be if you returned back with a divided heart to him whom you have loved, and said, 'I love another, but I will be true to you?' You love the good, the beautiful, the high, wherever you find it, Faustine-that makes you so fascinating; and you are too much the slave of the present to chain yourself lastingly to an individual-that makes you weak. I will not defend this weakness, because you might then reproach me with sophistry or accuse me of speaking for my own interest. But trust

me- if you were my sister, I would say the same. Untruth is a torn, half-wavering existence-a contradiction in the soul; end it by a prompt decision, by an irrevocable step, and you have freed yourself. Choose, choose, Faustine!" cried Mario, and the composure with which he had hitherto spoken was changed into the most troubled passion—“ now, directly, on the spot! In half an hour, I leave this room, and it depends on you whether I shall ever enter it again; for we cannot go on as formerly.""

She still hesitates; but his decision of character controls her in her own despite, and he leads her to the writing-table.

""Now-write, Faustine."

""Oh God!" gasped she, and sank into the chair-“I cannot ?"

"Then I must," said Mario, composedly.

6.66

Are you mad?" cried she, beside herself.

"No! no

hand but my own shall plunge the dagger into his heart; for I am doing it, I know."

"Yes," said Mario; "his or mine."

"See, you have no alternative. Granted you plunged it into mine, what would you do next? Say nothing to Andlau-That is not possible for you. Besides, he would guess that you are not the same; and, if he inquired, how would you be able to play the hypocrite-to lie? Suppose you told him what has occurred. Do you believe he would be able to shake off the impression? Were it a caprice on your side-if, in an idle hour, you had amused yourself by trifling with me-he might smile at it, and be comforted. Can he now?"

"Never!" and she seized the pen. She wrote as fol lows:-" Anastasius, your last word at parting has come true. I have forgotten you-no, not you, but myself. I mean, I have forgotten that I could or would live in you alone. We must never see each other again, Anastasius. By this decision I ruin your life, and I do not even entreat your forgiveness. You will know best what to think of Faustine."'

On a former occasion, when Faustine playfully asked Andlau to pay her the compliment of a little jealousy, he replied "You know that with me there can never be any question of jealousy, because I acknowledge no rival. I readily surrender to another the property which he extends his hand to seize.' He acted up to his

principle. No reply of any sort was returned for many months; but, as she said herself, the letter was his death-warrant.

Faustine's aversion to matrimony is overcome by Mengen's arguments :—

""Do you suppose I could contentedly resign myself to an equivocal connection, open to every misconstruction, where there is no reason for it beyond feminine caprice? Thousands may do homage to you: many may love you: your husband alone can protect and honour you, as you ought to be protected and honoured."

She promises to marry him as soon as he has obtained the consent of his parents, and he departs. Whilst he is absent, a harrowing incident occurs. Clement Wallsdorf shoots himself in her presence for love of her. Mario returns, snatches her from a scene of horror, and marries her.

Here the regular narrative breaks off, and the conclusion is related by the authoress in her own person, as she heard it from Mario, whom she meets in Venice five or six years afterwards, with his child, the child of Faustine.

They had lived happily beyond expectation for five years, and Faustine was the pet, the pride of his family. 'Intellectual supremacy-which makes ordinary women so unendurable, that we feel them as a troublesome appendage, something like an illustrious name in poverty -seemed given her to show that the most superior women can be the most amiable. She quietly folded her wings to prevent others from feeling they had none; but at the slightest encouragement, she spread them