"Charming! Now don't suppose that you are ever to regain possession of this ring. It is mine, do you understand? forever and ever. Par droit de conquête et par droit de naissance. Do you hear? for it certainly must have been made for me, or I for it. See! And I intend never to yield it but with my life. Gare aux voleurs!

But Edmond is still too busy with his papyrus to turn round and admire the rosy, impudent little finger that is shaking defiance at all the divinities of the Nile.

"Ah! Juliet, Juliet, boast not too loud, or at least too soon. (Another woful rent in this poor papyrus. Sad!) If you will not yield the ring but with your life, then must you give it to whoever shall one day be the possessor of that same dear life of yours; and may he take good care of both the precious gifts!"

"So be it!" she answers, laughing. "And it shall be my spousal ring. This and no other. I am sure, too, it will bring me good luck. "Tis doubtless an amulet or a talisman. See the wonderful characters here on the stone! Some mighty meaning they must have, no doubt. One fancies how some old wizard must have puzzled his own wise head how best to puzzle all the foolish heads in the world with this posy, for years and years, till at last he turned himself into a stone, like your friends Horus and Anubis, and what other spider-legged gods you may please to teach me the unpronounceable names of.”

So saying and so laughing, she comes up to Edmond, stooping all the fragrance of her soft brown hair over that unsavory papyrus which he has just succeeded in lodging safely under its glass frame.

So this time Edmond turns round, and . ah! that ever-recurring note of the hautboy in my ears!. there comes over him, all at once, a sort of cold, creepy shudder, and that strangelycommon feeling in the hair, as if damp fingers of an unseen hand were passing through the roots of it from behind. Nor, though I fancy him to be standing full in the sunshine of Juliet's laughing eyes, am I, on the whole, I must confess, disposed to wonder very much at this uncomfortable feeling which he describes himself to have felt just then, for the ring which he sees on the finger of Juliet is the antique ring of Seb Kronos, which he had first seen on the finger of Amasis of Thebes.

Instantaneously, as at the touch of a wizard's wand, all his senses are transported back amid the immemorial ruins of the temple of Ammon Chnouphis. He sees and hears the irrevocable rolling of the ancient Nile. Out from the whelming wave, upstretched as though to him, in agonizing effort, he sees the arm and hand of Amasis. Alone on the prow of his boat, standing unmoved, immovable, he sees Sethos the Egyptian. And the features of the face of Sethos are the features of the face of the Kabyl chief. He feels fixed keenly on his own the venomous eye of the Arab. Out from the incandescent heart of the kindling amethyst begin to dartle and to flash violet rays of lurid fire; and the fiery rays fiercely writhe and twist, and weave themselves up into the empty air before his eyes into angry letters of a luminous, bewildering writing. Forthwith come faint and far-off sounds, as though out of illimitable distance; and the

sounds enter, like wicked souls, into the violet flamebodies of the lurid letters of the written words, so that the words begin to mutter and to speak to him; and he hears the voices of the words as a man hears voices in a dream, which make a sound that is like a silence. And the sentence of the words that are uttered by the flame is the sentence of the words of Seb Kronos, the Indestructible Destroyer: "To MORTALS I GIVE, AND FROM MORTALS I TAKE, HAPPINESS. DISTURB NOT

THE HAND OF DESTINY !"

"Well, whenever you have finished your profound perusal of my talisman, I shall expect you, Edmond, to satisfy my curiosity with the interpretation of the hieroglyphics."

It is the voice of Juliet beside him. This sweet voice shatters the weird spell, and recalls him at once within the sphere of that gentle presence, whose sunny serenity is incapable of being troubled by any wizardry more wicked than perhaps the pert pranks of some playful Puck. Immediately all the magic was melted out of the ring; and Edmond, ashamed of his own unaccountable, but merely momentary disturbance of mind, was just about to explain to Juliet that he had in vain attempted to decipher the hieroglyphics, when, suddenly and blithely, in the great court-yard outside, sound the shrill, clear notes of a postillion's horn. It was no doubt the distant notes of this horn which, a few moments ago, had lent their phantom echoes to the fancied language of the fiery letters, in that rapid vision which had rushed for but an instant across the mind of Edmond. And thus a jolly German post-boy, blowing his horn, as he bumped along, in leather

breeches, on his way to the chateau, had unconsciously been enacting, in the imaginary drama of another man's mind, no less solemn and important a part than that of the divine Seb Kronos.

Immediately afterward a post-chaise rolls rumbling into the court, beneath the window where Edmond is standing with Juliet. A light elastic step in rapid movement on the stair; confused voices along the corridor; nearer and clearer; the door is dashed open; wherethrough also comes dashing at full speed, with a mighty clatter of spurs and sabre, into the Egyptian Gallery, quite regardless of

"Osiris, Apis, Orus, and their crew,"

a blooming young officer; and Felix, with a light, joyous laugh, flings himself into the arms of Edmond.

CHAPTER II.
FELIX.

THIS was the first meeting of the brothers since Edmond's return. When Edmond came home from his Egyptian journey, Felix was still at the military school at M- Soon after his arrival at LEdmond wrote from the chateau to Felix, proposing to visit him at M- in case his brother should be unable to obtain leave of absence. To this proposal Felix replied speedily and privately by the following letter, which I select from the numerous papers made over to me by the count, and copy without alteration or abridgment, as a tolerably fair specimen of the dif ference of character between the two brothers.

M

FELIX TO EDMOND.

Marked Private and Confidential.

Undated.

"Brother, don't come! Keep my secret; but, for God's sake, don't come. Fancy me crammed up to my ears for examination; loaded up to the muzzle (do you understand?) and ready to go off. I mean to take the dear old gentlefolks at home by surprise, and so I am going up a month before term. I can't hold out any longer. I can't live on in this way, sep