The young man took the cup she gave him, and drained it with a bow, while she simply touched her lips with the other goblet, and smiled again.
"To your future happiness," she said in a significant voice, and set the goblet down on the table.

They talked together after this reconciliation for some time and seemed better friends than before, but I saw that the woman kept furtively glancing at his face with a wicked smile on her lips. At length he handed her the mask, which evidently did not belong to him, and, after kissing her hand, was about to turn in the direction of the archway, when suddenly he grew pale, put his hand to his head quickly, and grasped the chair near which he stood to keep himself from falling.

"Why, what is this?" he cried in a hoarse, strained voice. "Gran Dio! what does it mean?"
She bent forward with a wicked laugh, and the rubies flashed forth venomous red flame in the soft light.
"It means that you have betrayed me and I have revenged myself!"
He looked at her with a dazed expression, made a step forward as if to kill this terrible woman, who, dangling the mask in her hand, stood mocking at his agony with a cruel smile, then suddenly flung up his hands with a wild cry of despair and fell at her feet--dead.
"Fool!" she said, without displaying the least sign of emotion. "Fool!"

I wished to rush forward and denounce the demon in woman's shape who had so vilely perpetrated this cold-blooded murder, but, overcome with horror, I reeled away from the curtain and fell--fell into the arms of some one who held me with a powerful grip. I gasped with alarm and was about to call out, when I felt a handkerchief dashed suddenly over my face wet with some liquid. In spite of my struggles it was held firmly there, and I gradually felt my senses leave me until I knew no more.

When I came to myself it was early morning, and I was seated on a stone bench in the Piazza Vittoria Emanuele, surrounded by a group of curious onlookers.

"Where am I?" I asked in English.

No one answered, and I repeated the question in Italian, upon which a fat woman spoke up,--

"Signor, you are in the Piazza Vittoria!" she said in a husky voice; "we found you here when we came first."

"But the palace, the woman, the poison!" I said stupidly, for my head was aching terribly.

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