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198 “The rascals thought I had the necklace. They did not know how kind you had been, my darling.”

I started where I stood. Marie grew red and then white, and looked down at him no longer with pity, but with scorn and anger on her face.

“I have it not,” she said again. “For all heaven, I would not touch it!”

And she looked up to me as she said it, praying me with her eyes to believe.

But her words roused and stung the duke to an effort and an activity that I thought impossible to him; for he rolled himself from her lap, and, raising himself on his hand, with half his body lifted from the ground, said in a loud voice:

“You have it not? You haven’t the necklace? Why, your message told me that you would never part from it again?”

“I sent no message,” she answered in a hard voice, devoid of pity for him; how should she pity him? “I sent no message, save that I would sooner die than see you again.”

Amazement spread over his face even in the hour of his agony.

“You sent,” said he, “to say that you would await me to-night, and to ask for the necklace to adorn yourself for my coming.”

Though he was dying, I could hardly control myself to hear him speak such words. But Marie, in the same calm scornful voice asked:

“By whom did the message come?”

“By your mother,” said he, gazing at her eagerly. “And I sent mine—the one I told