"Oh, I do! You know I do! more than life!"
"Then let Satan have me after death! I do not care!" replied this desperate fool.
"Hush! this is a dangerous topic. It makes me reel. Give me a glass of water, Malcolm, and let us talk of something else," said the wily siren.
When she had drunk the water the viscount brought her she said:
"There is a question I have been dying to ask you all day, but I could get no good chance without the risk of being overheard—and that would have been ruin."
"What is the question, Faustina?"
The woman turned so deadly white that her black eyes gleamed like great balls of jet from a face of stone, as sinking her voice to the lowest key, she said:
"What have you done with it?"
"With what, Faustina?"
"With the dead body of the black woman?"