HIS KINGDOM.
Count Hannibal could not have said why he did not speak to her at once.
Warned by an instinct vague and ill-understood, he remained silent, his
eyes riveted on her, until she rose from the floor. A moment later she
met his gaze, and he looked to see her start. Instead, she stood quiet
and thoughtful, regarding him with a kind of sad solemnity, as if she saw
not him only, but the dead; while first one tremor and then a second
shook her frame.
At length "It is over!" she whispered. "Patience, Monsieur; have no
fear, I will be brave. But I must give a little to him."
"To him!" Count Hannibal muttered, his face extraordinarily, pale.
She smiled with an odd passionateness. "Who was my lover!" she cried,
her voice a-thrill. "Who will ever be my lover, though I have denie
