do I speak thus?" said Madame Stortzer,
interrupting herself impatiently. " The man laid
out his plan like an artist, and day by day,
hour by hour almost, the consolation of his
presence became more and more necessary to the
countess.

"Consolation is a dangerous thing, when the
consoler is a man possessed of such qualities as
this Lieutenant Bergfeldt, and when the consoled
is a young and pretty woman, with large means
at her disposal. Before the year was out, it
became evident to those who stood by and
watched, that the poor old count would soon
have a successor, and ere the second year was
half through, Lieutenant Bergfeldt was
established in the old castle, lord of its mistress, and
of all the place contained.

"I am near the termination of my part of the
story," my friend went on. " His object gained,
this unhappy woman in his power, and all her
possessions witliin his grasp, it became unnecessary
for him to play his amiable part longer, and
very soon this ill-starred lady found to her dismay
that she had sacrificed herself to a man whose
dark will was unfettered by any restraints such
as the heart and the conscience exercise over
less cold-blooded mortals. Periods of ill-usage
and neglect at home, were followed by seasons
when the poor woman was altogether deserted
by her cruel and unscrupulous master.
Sometimes even she would hear nothing of him for
months together, and, indeed, there is little
reason to doubt that the less she heard of his
proceedings at such times the better.

"It was during one of these absences from
the castle, no doubt, that Colonel Bergfeldt as
he is now called, made his recent sojourn in
Vienna. You yourself were the witness of his
success in one society, and you, like every one
else, were astonished at his sudden withdrawal
from it. When I have accounted to you for that
withdrawal, all that I have got to tell in
connexion with this strange and terrible affair will
be at an end.

"It is only a few days since that the people
about the palace here were a good deal astonished
by the arrival at the gates of a certain old priest,
who came up from a distant part of the country,
and desired to have an audience of the emperor,
alleging that he had a communication to make
of the very greatest possible importance, and
which he could, or would, only make to the
emperor himself. It is one of the curious apparent
inconsistencies of our despotic governments, that
the sovereign is more accessible than with you
in England; so it was no great wonder that that
petition of the old priest's was granted, and he
was admitted to an audience with the emperor.
The old man said that he had felt for some time
that his own end was near, and that he had
travelled, in spite of his many infirmities, a long
distance, in order that he might reveal to the
Father of the People certain secrets, which, as
they concerned others, he felt ought not to die
with him. And then he spoke at once of this
man, the Colonel Bergfeldt. The marriage
ceremony, which the priest himself had performed
between the countess and Bergfeldt, had been a
vain and empty ceremony, the latter having, at
the moment when it was celebrated, a wife still
living— an unprincipled woman, who consented
to keep the thing secret in consideration of a
certain annual sum paid to her by the colonel.
These circumstances had come to the knowledge
of the priest under the seal of the confessional,
for it was one of the fantastic elements in
Bergfeldt's character, that he still held to the
performance of some of the rites of religion, or, as
it should be called in this case, perhaps, of
superstition.

" Under the same seal of secrecy, too," con-
tinued Madame Stortzer, "there came to the
priest's knowledge the true story of the death
of the old count. You have no doubt guessed
already who was the perpetrator of that cruel
murder. When I told you of that temporary
absence of the colonel's from the theatre on the
night when that crime was committed, you
guessed, I have no doubt, that it was no military,
or indeed any other, duty that took him away,
but that his object in absenting himself was to
get that opportunity of taking the life of the
man who had admitted him to his house, and
given him his confidence and his friendship. You
guessed rightly. On that dreadful night this
wicked and merciless man, who had long
entertained the desire to possess himself of his friend's
wife, and of his money too—on that night, when
he left the theatre, he managed—that lucky accident
of the porter's absence from his post favouring
him to pass the gate unobserved by everybody
but the child, whose evidence was not taken
in contradiction to the colonel's own statement.
It was he who committed that crime which he
was afterwards so busy in trying to trace. It
was he who profited by it, and became possessed
of the goods and the wife of the friend whom he
had treacherously slain."

"And was this the man," I asked, for I could
hardly believe it, "with whom we have all been
associating on terms of intimacy?"

"The same," replied my friend. " I have little
doubt—for I forgot to mention just now that his
first wife is lately dead—I have little doubt that he
came now to Vienna with the intention of making
some other unhappy girl his victim. He would
calculate, and with justice, that a woman of the
countess's weak and yielding nature would easily
be kept silent, or, as his marriage with her was
illegal at the time when it was made, perhaps he
thought, being tired of her, that he might now get
rid of her altogether. Of these things, however, I
know nothing; they may have been in his mind, or
they may not. At all events, his career is cut
short."

"And how was his arrest managed?" I asked.

"Oh," replied Madame Stortzer, "I saw it
with my own eyes. You were not at the ball at
Madame de Merville's, I remember, or you would
have seen the arrest yourself, though of course