"Was he so?" breathed madam—and her green eyes grew black—"I should have liked to meet him, then. I have yet to meet the man who is as true as steel. Griselda, you are one who should win back a man—but, oh, you'll never do it! never!"
A wild change swept over her fine face, her wondrous, globular eyes grew deep and passionate, and her beautiful hands were clasped in covert anguish.
"I pity your sad life, madame, if you have proved all false," said Margaret, with feeling, "for there are good men on earth, I doubt not."
"The best die; the fairest, the most loved," said madame, faintly. "Miss Walsingham, I had one son—ah!"—she shivered and closed her eye—"and he died miserably. I loved him, I did love him, and he was my only consolation for many years." She dashed her tears away and looked up sternly. "You make me talk to you, with your soft, true face," she exclaimed, bitterly, "and I must not talk. But mind, I have told you nothing; you can't say that I have narrated any of my history to you."
"I had not thought of saying so," replied Margaret.
"Ah, you are a good soul, and I like you," murmured madame, patting Margaret's hand with a touch like falling rose-leaves. "So sweet, so heroic, so humble! You remind me of myself many years ago in old Austria, when I was in love with—my destroyer!"
Her face hardened, her green eyes glimmered with the deadly light of hate.
She turned off her momentary remorse with a heartless laugh, and rattled her collier of golden lockets.
"Each of these lockets," sneered madame, "contains a victim to my power of fascination, [there were at least a dozen,] and the whole string of them was presented to me by an old vice admiral who fell in love with me at Barbadoes last winter, and escorted me to the Bermudas when I went there. My good lady, that first foolish passion of mine has so destroyed my powers of mercy that I love to torture mankind and madden them with false expectations, if only I might be revenged."
The beautiful lips of the lady suddenly compressed with a cruel expression, and looking up, Margaret beheld the Chevalier de Calembours hurrying across the room to join them.