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When Neria awoke from a brief and disturbed sleep, it was some time before
she found it possible to understand what change had come upon her life.
And as one after another of the strange revelations which Fate, after withholding
them from her most urgent researches, had capriciously piled before her in a single
day, rose to he mind, she set it aside to turn to another, which for the moment
seemed more important. She was herself a Vaughn then! She had the
same right by birth to his proud name, as the husband who had bestowed it
upon her. She might name her mother with tears, perhaps, but without a blush.
And her sister? Did not that dying woman say that the Venetian goblet was
an inheritance from her own family, and was it not in exact similitude with the
bracelet which Vaughn had, soon after their marriage, given her as her sole inheritance,
the only relic of her parents? And was it not thus—and as this
thought flashed into Neria's mind she caught her breath sharply as if the poisoned
tongue of the golden serpent had pierced her own flesh—was it not the resemblance
in her father's picture, to the face of that most unhappy and foullywronged
of women which had haunted her when she first beheld it? Had
she not sufficient ground for the conviction that Doctor Luttrell's wife had
been her own and only sister? And he? With what emotions must she henceforth
meet him? And what was her duty, in regard to communicating her suspicions
to those who would sharply investigate their foundation? And even
were they verified, what satisfaction could the result bring to the life already
broken upon the dark and cruel purpose of this insatiable man?

And Francia! Brilliant, careless, beautiful Francia! whose life had yet
known no darker shadow than a lover's quarrel, how could she bear the shame
and misery of the story the old nurse had told of Vaughn's first wife, and her
mother? But at this point Neria once more paused aghast. Vaughn! Her
husband, the man whom if she had not wholly loved she had revered and
trusted, and accepted, in his every deed and thought, as worthy to be her law!
What was this story of his early life, almost his present life indeed? Mrs. Rhee
had lived at Bonniemeer until Vaughn's marriage with herself, and Chloe had
distinctly said that the housekeeper had loved her master with an idolatrous passion,
and had jealously sought the life of the woman to whom he had given the
love for which she had pined through so many years. How had this woman
dared to love him thus, and how had he received her love?

Neria hid her face in her hands, and a hot blush tingled over her face and
neck, and even to her fingers' ends. O, if Vaughn was not pure and good, what
hope was there that she should ever love him better than she had done? And

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the hereditary secret of the Vaughns, whose solution became more binding upon
her than even before, now that she was herself a party to it, and now that a
certain clue had been placed in her hands—what was she to do in this matter?

A sudden resolution formed itself in her mind, and seating herself at the
table, she hastily wrote a few lines to Fergus, merely saying that she needed his
help and counsel, and begging him to come to her without delay. The address
was hardly written, when, after a gentle tap, the door was opened by Francia,
who entered so quietly that Neria, looking up in surprise, was startled to see
how pale and haggard she looked, and how large her eyes had grown in a single
night of watching and weeping.

“I have come to see if you are ill, dear,” said the girl, gliding behind
Neria's chair to avoid her questioning eyes.

“No, Franc, but I can see that you are,” and Neria, rising, took Francia's
hands in hers, and looked into her fair face, while the malign assertion of the
old negress rushed back upon her memory—“She got de brack drop in her veins
for all her pooty looks.”

With a sudden and womanly impulse, Neria opened her arms, and taking her
adopted sister close to her heart, kissed her tenderly, and with a warmth very
unusual to her ordinarily reticent temperament. Francia, whose heavy eyes
needed but this invitation to overflow, hid her face upon the other's neck, and
wept unrestrainedly, while Neria, gently smoothing the ripples of her hair, found
something terrible in the thought that this poor child had come for shelter and
comfort to her of all others—to her, who had become the recipient and possible
betrayer of a secret, before which these tears should dry as morning dew before
the terror of a devouring flame. The very idea that she must hide so much,
even while appearing to receive and repay the mute confidence of these tears,
made Francia's presence distasteful to Neria's sensitive truthfulness, and after
a few moments she gently withdrew from the embrace, and said, with an attempt
at cheerfulness,

“I fancy we are neither of us very well or bright this morning, darling. Will
you please tell them to send me some coffee up-stairs, and then take something
yourself? I will not come down just now.”

“Yes, Neria,” and Franc, wiping her eyes, and a little hurt at feeling her
confidence repelled, was turning away, when her eye caught the direction of the
letter upon the table. A quick wave of color swept into her wan face; and as
she hurried away, a second burst of tears gave a significant clue to the origin of
the first.

Neria looked after her thoughtfully, and from the door her eyes turned to the
letter upon the table. “Yes,” said she, aloud, “it is right that I should tell
Fergus all—everything. He has as much right to know these matters as I.”

An hour latter, Mrs. Vaughn ordered her pony-carriage, and drove herself
along the beach to Cragness, at which place Doctor Luttrell still lingered. Inquiring
for him, she was shown at once to the library where he was sitting.
Surprised, and yet relieved that she should come to see him, Doctor Luttrell
advanced to meet his guest with outstretched hand. Neria looked at him quietly,
and the hand sunk as if palsy-smitten.

“I supposed by your coming to see me that you were my friend,” said he,
sullenly; “or is this a business call? I am aware that my lease has expired.”

“It is a business call, but not connected with your lease,” said Neria, calmly
disregarding the sneer. “I wish to ask you some questions with regard to the

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late Mrs. Luttrell.” She fixed her eyes upon him as she spoke, and he, resisting
the impulse to evade or quail before that straightforward glance, held his
feline eyes unwaveringly upon hers, although in the effort his lips grew white,
and contracting slightly upon themselves gave a cold gleam of his glittering
teeth between. To speak was impossible, but a haughty bow signified his assent
to the proposed inquiry. “Will you tell me Mrs. Luttrell's maiden name?”
asked Neria, presently. An expression of relief crossed Doctor Luttrell's face.
“I thought all the world knew her to have been Miss Davenport,” said he,
with a sneer.

“I knew that she was so called, but I have reason to suppose that she had
the right to another name by birth,” pursued Neria, undauntedly.

Dr. Luttrell considered for a moment, but seeing no sufficient reason for attempting
to conceal facts with which Neria appeared, at least, partially acquainted,
he assumed an appearance of candor, and said, “Certainly. You
have very probably heard that Mrs. Luttrell was actually the daughter of an
Italian noble, the Count or Marquis Vascetti, who, like many of his countrymen,
retained nothing of the ancient splendor of his house, except its haughtiness
and its traditions. Mr. and Mrs. Davenport, spending a summer in Venice,
hired the palazzo of the Marquis, who retained a modest corner for himself, his
daughter, and one old servant, the last survivor of the hereditary retainers of
the family. The Davenports became much interested in the daughter, whose
name was Beatrice, and when, one fine morning, the old marquis was found
dead in his bed, and it seemed probable that the bed itself must be sold to pay
for burying him, they stepped in, as the Deus ex machina, put the old man decently
under ground, or under water, (as it is of Venice that we speak), pensioned
the servant, left the palazzo to the Jew who had foreclosed his mortgage
upon it, and taking the poor little orphan under their paternal and maternal
wings, brought her home as their adopted daughter. Voila tout! And if you
find this bit of family history a bore and out of taste, remember, madam, that
it is you who have asked it of me.”

In the course of his long address he had recovered his native coolness, and
in speaking the last words, looked into Neria's face with an assured smile,
mingled with something of supercilious inquiry, as to her motive in thus questioning
upon matters which, as he intimated, were not her own.

To this unspoken taunt Neria quietly replied. “You will excuse the apparent
intrusiveness of my inquiries when I tell you that Mrs. Luttrell was my
only sister. I will not trouble you with particulars; but of the fact, your late
account of her parentage has enabled me to speak with certainty. With this
explanation I think you will no longer wonder that I should feel a more than
common interest in her life, or in her death.” And with this last, she fixed
upon him such clear bright eyes that he shrunk as from the pitiless gaze of the
noonday sun, and could only stammer with averted eyes,

“Your sister?”

“Yes, my sister; and it is of you—of you, her husband—the sworn protector
and defender of the life and happiness of that unfortunate girl, that homeless
orphan—poor in the midst of wealth, because denied the ties and the love that
make the humblest home a happy one—it is of you, Wyvern Luttrell, that I ask
a reckoning of my sister's year of married life—the year which has closed, in
pain and terror, the story of her young life. Why is she dead at two-and-twenty,
she who should have lived to see the glory of maturity—the peaceful joy of age?
Why is she dead?”

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As her regard had pierced his heart, so did her thrilling voice strike through
his brain. He shrunk together, and, with sidelong, sullen look, that dared not
rise above her feet, muttered, “How am I to tell? Her time had come?” Neria
paused a moment, while her soul gathered its strength, and the solemn light
of prophecy made her face awful in its angelic beauty. Then she said: “And
God's time will come at last for you and for me. Dare not approach me until that
hour.” Livid and shrunken with terror and impotent rage, he made no reply,
offered no response to her gesture of farewell, but stood, with down-dropped
head and hanging arms, like Eugene Aram, when, in the clear morning light, he
saw, in all its hideous meaning, the vision of his sleeping hours.

At the door she turned and said, coldly: “My sister, in her last moments,
gave me the remnant of that ancient jewel of our house, whose Venetian
glass was shattered by the draught you were about to administer to her.
It is a sacred relic to me, but can hardly be so to you. Will you give it to me?”

He looked toward but not at her, muttered something in his throat which his
white lips refused to articulate, then left the room, and presently returning with
the goblet frame in his hand, offered it, without a word, to Neria.

She took it as silently, hastily sought and found the minutely engraved initials
and crest which completed the chain of evidence establishing her own and
Mrs. Luttrell's parentage, and then, with no pretence of leave-taking to the
guilty man who stood watching her with doubt and terror struggling in his
feline eyes, she withdrew, leaving him alone with the shadows and the memories
of that ghostly chamber.

The next morning brought Fergus again to Bonniemeer. Neria welcomed
him joyfully, and at first felt as if half her perplexities were removed, now that
she had so efficient a counsellor and assistant to whom she might confide them.
But, when seated with him in the library, she began to consider at what point
of the story she should commence, she found herself restrained by delicacy toward
Francia, by honor toward Vaughn, from repeating the details given her by
Chloe, while a reluctance to show her suspicions of Doctor Luttrell with any
one whomsoever, deterred her from giving more than a vague outline of her sister's
life and death.

But the finding of her father's journal and its contents, the proof obtained
from it of her own and Mrs. Luttrell's parentage, as well as the identity of the
bracelet and Venetian goblet with the hereditary jewels of the Vascetti, all these
she related fully, as also the story of the secret trust bequeathed by Reginald
Vaughn to John Gillies, and by him to herself; all this she repeated clearly
and without reserve, ending by placing before the young man the letter of his
granduncle, the few lines left with it by Gillies to her, and the journal containing
the key to the cipher.

Fergus listened attentively, read minutely, and then asked:

“Is Doctor Luttrell still at Cragness?”

“Yes, but leaves to-day.”

“Then to-morrow we will go over there, and I shall try to prove the correctness
of a theory which suggests itself to me in connection with this story of the
cipher. Meantime, allow me to congratulate myself upon the relationship newly
discovered between us. I had rather consider you as my own cousin than as
my uncle's wife.” He took her hand and kissed her cheek as he spoke, and
Neria felt a strange thrill in this her first recognition by her kindred. “Now
show me, if you please, your father's journal and picture, with the bracelet and
goblet frame,” continued Fergus.

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Neria laid them upon the table, and the young man took first the picture,
which he examined minutely.

“Yes, this is a Vaughn,” said he, at length, “there is no mistaking either
the family likeness or the likeness to yourself. You show no trace of your
Italian blood, unless in your golden hair, which is truly Venetian and like that of
Titian's women.”

Neria looked up in surprise, for a compliment from the truthful and exact
Fergus was a circumstance; but he, not noticing the look, was now curiously examining
the bracelet and goblet frame.

“Yes,” said he, “here is the name on each, `F. V.,' for Fiamma Vascetti.
And the fact of Mrs. Luttrell's inheriting this goblet is certainly proof of the
strongest in support of your consanguinity. Do you imagine the bracelet still
to possess its death-dealing powers, or has time destroyed them?”

“I have never been able to move the spring which should project the little
shaft mentioned in father's description,” said Neria. “Perhaps he or my mother
had it destroyed, and sacrificed the romance of the thing to the safety of its
wearer.”

“Probably,” replied Fergus, after some futile efforts to move the emerald in
the head of the serpent, who seemed to writhe and coil beneath the torture of
the attempt. “That would have been the common-sense course to adopt with
regard to so dangerous a plaything, and I presume you are correct. Now, if
you please, I will take this journal to my own room, and see what I can make
of it.”

Neria signified assent, and, when Fergus was gone, sat for some time indulging
the pleasant consciousness that she might safely rely upon his clear head
and decisive judgment for important aid in her various perplexities. Unconsciously,
she compared him with Vaughn, and found herself better content with
the uncompromising integrity, commanding will, and stern self-control of the
one, than with the other's more suave, more polished and finely graduated characteristics.

Francia did not appear until teatime, and then scarcely looked at Fergus,
who treated her politely, but with indifference. Neria watched both uneasily.

“She loves him only too well,” thought she; “but he—how does he regard
her? and, even if their love should be mutual, what would Fergus think of
Chloe's story?” With these questions perplexing her mind, Neria became
more silent than her wont. Francia scarcely spoke at all, and Fergus evidently
only talked to avoid silence.

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