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 an effort to speak to her. I rose, still holding the crushed little package as fiercely as though it were a thing of life. She looked at me with a smile, intending it to veil her alarm and anxiety.

"Princess, I crave your pardon. I—this package—I" I stopped, stuttering at a sheer loss for words. A tinge of colour mounted to her face as she said in a tone much less warm than before, and, as I thought, not without a note of rising indignation.

"It is the package you sent me, Count Benderoff."

"No, no, it was sent to you in my name—to poison you." She started back and stared at me. "I will try to explain. I have acted like a madman; I have been almost one, I think. This thing"—holding it up still gripped fiercely—"was sent you to-day by that woman. By the mercy of heaven it arrived while you were absent, and your visit to my house saved you" And in a shambling, jumbled, half-incoherent way I told her what had occurred.

The colour in her cheeks flowed and ebbed as I spoke, and I saw an ever-varying light in her eyes as they were bent upon me, now in indignation, again in horror, and yet again in gratitude mingled with feelings which now I almost dared to read as my heart dictated.

When I finished my disjointed narrative, she thanked me very simply, though her agitation, heightened colour, and tender glances told me how deeply she was moved. Leaving me for a moment, she returned with the wrapper of the package and a card of mine, on which were scribbled my initials in a handwriting much like my own.

"This was with the packet," she said, giving me the card. "But I have never seen your handwriting." I saw in a moment that the spy in my house