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VIVIAN GREY.

husband of Mrs. Felix Lorraine, remember my last words:—it will be well for you, if your frame be like that of Mithridates of Pontus, and proof against——poison."

"And did you say this?" shrieked the woman.

"Even these were my words."

"Then may all evil blast you!" She threw herself on the sofa: her voice was choked with the convulsions of her passion, and she writhed in the most fearful agony.

Vivian Grey, lounging in an arm-chair, in the easiest of postures, and with a face brilliant with smiles, watched his victim with the eye of a Mephistophiles.

She slowly recovered, and with a broken voice poured forth her sacred absolution to the relieved penitent.

"You wonder I do not stab you,—hah! hah! hah! there is no need for that;—the good powers be praised, that you refused the