Front matter (continued 3)

"Back again, and busy again?" he said, turning.

"Busier than ever," said Danton, with a frown. He raised his shoulders as if he felt a weight upon them. "Once this business of Capet's is arranged, we can work; at present it's just chaos all round."

Dangeau leaned closer and spoke low.

"I was detained—have only just come. Has anything been done—decided?"

"We are unanimous, I think. I spoke, they all agreed. Robespierre is with us, and his party is well in hand. Death is the only thing, and the sooner the better."

Dangeau did not speak, and Danton's eye rested on him with a certain impatience.

"Sentiment will serve neither France nor us at this juncture," he said on a deep note, rough with irritation. "He has conspired with Austria, and would bring in foreign troops upon us without a single scruple. What is one man's life? He must die."

Dangeau looked down.

"Yes, he must die," he said in a low, grave voice, and there was a momentary silence. He stared into the fire, and saw the falling embers totter like a mimic throne, and fall into the sea of flame below. A cloud of sparks flew up, and were lost in blackness.

"Life is like that," he said, half to himself.

Danton walked away, his big head bent, the veins of his throat swollen.

CHAPTER XI

THE IRREVOCABLE VOTE

Danton returned was Danton in action. Force possessed the party once more and drove it resistless to its goal. Permanent Session was moved, and carried—permanent Session of the National Convention—until its near five hundred members had voted one by one on the three all-important questions: Louis Capet, is he guilty, or not guilty? Shall the Convention judge him, or shall there be a further delay, an appeal to the people of France? If the Convention judges, what is its judgment—imprisonment, banishment, or death?

Forthwith began the days of the Three Votings, stirring and dramatic days seen through the mist of years and the dust-clouds raised by groping historians. What must they have been to live through?

It was Wednesday evening, January 16, and lamps were lit in the Hall of the Convention, but their glow shone chiefly on the tribune, and beyond there crowded the shadows, densely mysterious. Vergniaud, the President, wore a haggard face—his eyes were hot and weary, for he was of the Gironde, and the Gironde began to know that the day was lost. He called the names sonorously, with a voice that had found its pitch and kept it in spite of fatigue; and as he called, the long procession of members rose, passed for an instant to the lighted tribune, and voted audibly in the hearing of the whole Convention. Each man voted, and passed again into the shadow. So we see them—between the dark past and the dark future—caught for an instant by that one flash which brands them on history's film for ever.

Loud Jacobin voices boomed "Death," and ranted of treason; epigrams were made to the applause of the packed galleries. For the people of Paris had crowded in, and every available inch of room was packed. Here were the tricoteuses—those knitting women of the Revolution, whose steel needles were to flash before the eyes of so many of the guillotine's waiting victims, before the eyes indeed of many and many an honourable Deputy voting here to-night. Here were swart men of St. Antoine's quarter—brewers, bakers, oilmen, butchers, all the trades—whispering, listening, leaning over the rail, now applauding to the echo, now hissing indignantly, as the vote pleased or displeased them. Death demanded with a spice of wit pleased the most—a voice faltering on a timorous recommendation to mercy evoked the loudest jeers.

Dangeau sat in his place and heard the long, reverberating roll of names, until his own struck strangely on his ear. He rose and mounted into the smoky, yellow glare of the lamps that swung above the tribune. Vergniaud faced him, dignified and calm.

"Your vote, Citizen?" and Dangeau, in clear, grave reply:

"Death, Citizen President."

Here there was nothing to tickle the waiting ears above, and he passed down the steps again in silence, whilst another succeeded him, and to that other another yet. All that long night, and all the next long day, the voices never ceased. Now they rang loud and full, now low and hesitating; and after each vote came the people's comment of applause, dissent, or silence.

Dangeau passed into one of the lower galleries reserved for members and their friends. His limbs were cramped with the long session, and his throat was parched and dry; coffee was to be had, he knew, and he was in quest of it. As he got clear of the thronged entrance, a strange sight met his eye, for the gallery resembled a box at the opera, infinitely extended.

Bare-necked women flashed their diamonds and their wit, chattering, laughing, and exchanging sallies with their friends.

Refreshments were being passed round, and Deputies who were at leisure bowed, and smiled, and did the honours, as if it were a place of amusement, and not a hall of judgment.

A bold, brown-faced woman, with magnificent black eyes, her full figure much accentuated by a flaring tricolour sash, swept to the front of the gallery, and looked down. In her wake came a sleepy, white-fleshed blonde, mincing as she walked. She too wore the tricolour, and Dangeau's lips curled at the desecration.

"Philippe is voting," cried the brown woman loudly. "See, Jeanne, there he comes!"

Dangeau looked down, and saw Philippe Égalité, sometime Philippe d'Orleans, prince of the blood and cousin of the King, pass up the tribune steps. Under the lamps his face showed red and blotched, his eyes unsteady; but he walked jauntily, twisting a seal at his fob. His attire bespoke the dandy, his manner the poseur. Opposite to Vergniaud he bowed with elegance, and cried in a voice of loud effrontery, "I vote for Death."

Through the Assembly ran a shudder of recoil. Natural feeling was not yet brayed to dust in the mortar of the Revolution, and it thrilled and quickened to the spectacle of kinsman rising against kinsman, and the old blood royal of France turning from its ruined head publicly, and in the sight of all men.

"It is good that Louis should die, but it is not good that Philippe should vote for his death. Has the man no decency?" growled Danton at Dangeau's ear.

Long after, when his own hour was striking, Philippe d'Orleans protested that he had voted upon his soul and conscience—the soul whose existence he denied, and the conscience whose voice he had stifled for forty years. Be that between him and that soul and conscience, but, as he descended the tribune steps, Girondin, Jacobin, and Cordelier alike drew back from him, and men who would have cried death to the King's cousin, cried none the less, "Shame on Égalité!"

Only the bold brown woman and her companion laughed. The former even leaned across the bar and kissed her hand, waving, and beckoning him.

Dangeau's gaze, half sardonically curious, half disgusted, rested upon the scene.

"All posterity will gaze upon what is done this day," he said in a low voice to Danton—"and they will see this."

"The grapes are trodden, the wine ferments, and the scum rises," returned Danton on a deep, growling note.

"Such scum as this?"

"Just such scum as this!"

Below, one of the Girondins voted for imprisonment, and the upper galleries hissed and rocked.

"Death, death, death!" cried the next in order.

"Death, and not so much talk about it!"

"Death, by all means death!"

The blonde woman, Jeanne Fresnay, was pricking off the votes on a card.

"Ah—at last!" she laughed. "I thought I should never get the hundred. Now we have one for banishment, ten for imprisonment, and a hundred for death."

The brown Marguerite Didier produced her own card—a dainty trifle tied with a narrow tricolour ribbon.

"You are wrong," she said—"it is but eight for imprisonment. You give him two more chances of life than there is any need to."

"That's because I love him so well. Is he not Philippe's cousin?" drawled the other, making the correction.

Philippe himself leaned suddenly between them.

"I should be jealous, it appears," he said smoothly. "Who is it that you love so much?"

The bare white shoulders were lifted a little farther out of their very scanty drapery.

"Eh—that charming cousin Veto of yours. Since you love him so well, I am sure I may love him too. May I not?"

Philippe's laugh was a little hoarse, though ready enough.

"But certainly, chère amie," he said. "Have I not just proved my affection to the whole world?"

Mademoiselle Didier laughed noisily and caught him by the arm.

"There, let him go," she said with impatience. "At the last he bores one, your good cousin. We want more bonbons, and I should like coffee. It is cold enough to freeze one, with so much coming and going."

Again Dangeau turned to his companion.

"An edifying spectacle, is it not?" he asked.

Danton shrugged his great shoulders.

"Mere scum and froth," he said. "Let it pass. I want to speak to you. You are to be sent on mission."

"On mission?"

"Why, yes. You can be useful, or I am much mistaken. It is this way. The South is unsatisfactory. There is a regular campaign of newspaper calumny going on, and something must be done, or we shall have trouble. I thought of sending you and Bonnet. You are to make a tour of the cities, see the principal men, hold public meetings, explain our aims, our motives. It is work which should suit you, and more important than any you could do in Paris at present."

Dangeau's eyes sparkled; a longing for action flared suddenly up in him.

"I will do my best," he said in a new, eager voice.

"You should start as soon as this business is over." Danton's heavy brow clouded. "Faugh! It stops us at every turn. I have a thousand things to do, and Louis blocks the way to every one. Wait till my hands are free, and you shall see what we will make of France!"

"I will be ready," said Dangeau.

Danton had called for coffee, and stood gulping it as he talked. Now, as he set the cup down, he laid his hand on Dangeau's shoulder a moment, and then moved off muttering to himself:

"This place is stifling—the scent, the rouge. What do women do in an affair of State?"

In Dangeau's mind rose a vision of Aline de Rochambeau, cool, delicate, and virginal, and the air of the gallery became intolerable. As he went out in Danton's wake, he passed a handsome, dark-eyed girl who stared at him with an inviting smile. Lost in thought, he bowed very slightly and was gone. His mind was all at once obsessed with the vision he had evoked. It came upon him very poignantly and sweetly, and yet—yet—that vote of his, that irrevocable vote. What would she say to that?

Duty led men by strange ways in those strange days. Only of one thing could a man take heed—that he should be faithful to his ideals, and constant in the path which he had chosen, even though across it lay the shadows of disillusion and bitterness darkening to the final abyss. There could be no turning back.

The dark girl flushed and bit an angrily twitching lip as she stared after Dangeau's retreating figure. When Hébert joined her, she turned her shoulder on him, and threw him a black look.

"Why did you leave me?" she cried hotly. "Am I to stand here alone, for any beast to insult?"

"Poor, fluttered dove," said Hébert, sneering. He slid an easy arm about her waist. "Come then, Thérèse, no sulks. Look over and watch that fool Girondin yonder. He 's dying, they say, but must needs be carried here to vote for mercy."

As he spoke he drew her forward, and still with a dark glow upon her cheeks she yielded.

CHAPTER XII

SEPARATION

Rosalie Leboeuf sat behind her counter knitting. Even on this cold January day the exertion seemed to heat her. She paused at intervals, and waved the huge, half-completed stocking before her face, to produce a current of air. Swinging her legs from the counter, and munching an apple noisily, was a handsome, heavy-browed young woman, whose fine high colour and bold black eyes were sufficiently well known and admired amongst a certain set. An atmosphere of vigour and perfect health appeared to surround her, and she had that pose and air which come from superb vitality and complete self-satisfaction. If the strait-laced drew their skirts aside and stuck virtuous noses in the air when Thérèse Marcel was mentioned, it was very little that that young woman cared.

She and Rosalie were first cousins, and the respectable widow Leboeuf winked at Thérèse's escapades, in consideration of the excellent and spicy gossip which she could often retail.

Rosalie was nothing if not curious; and just now there was a very savoury subject to hand, for Paris had seen her King strip to the headsman, and his blood flow in the midst of his capital town.

"You should have been there, ma cousine," said Thérèse between two bites of her apple.

"I?" said Rosalie in her thick, drawling way. "I am no longer young enough, nor slim enough, to push and struggle for a place. But tell me then, Thérèse, was he pale?"

Thérèse threw away the apple core, and showed all her splendid teeth in a curious feline mixture of laugh and yawn.

"Well, so-so," she said lazily; "but he was calm enough. I have heard it said that he was all of a sweat and a tremble on the tenth of August, but he did n't show it yesterday. I was well in front,—Heaven be praised, I have good friends,—and his face did not even twitch when he saw the steel. He looked at it for a moment or two,—one would have said he was curious,—and then he began to speak."

Rosalie gave a little shudder, but her face was full of enjoyment.

"Ah," she breathed, leaning forward a little.

"He declared that he died innocent, and wishing France—nobody knows what; for Santerre ordered the drums to be beaten, and we could not hear the rest. I owe him a grudge, that Santerre, for cutting the spectacle short. What, I ask you, does he imagine one goes to the play in order to miss the finest part, and I with a front place, too! But they say he was afraid there would be a rescue. I could have told him better. We are not fools!"

"And then——?"

"Well, thanks to the drums, you couldn't hear; but there was a whispering with the Abbé, and Sanson hesitating and shivering like a cat with a wet paw and the gutter to cross. Everything was ready, but it seems he had qualms—that Sanson. The National Guards were muttering, and the good Mère Garnet next to me began to shout, 'Death to the Tyrant,' only no one heard her because of Santerre's drums, when suddenly he bellowed, 'Executioner, do your duty!' and Citizen Sanson seemed to wake up. It was all over in a flash then; the Abbé whispered once, called out loudly, and pchtt! down came the knife, and off came the head. Rose Lacour fainted just at my elbow, the silly baggage; but for me, I found it exciting—more exciting than the theatre. I should have liked to clap and call 'Encore!'"

Rosalie leaned back, fanning, her broad face a shade paler, whilst the girl went on:

"His eyes were still open when Sanson held up the head, and the blood went drip, drip, drip. We were all so quiet then that you could hear it. I tell you that gave one a sensation, my cousin!"

"Blood—ouf!" said Rosalie; "I do not like to see blood. I cannot digest my food after it."

"For me, I am a better patriot than you," laughed Thérèse; "and if it is a tyrant's blood that I see, it warms my heart and does it good."

A shudder ran through Rosalie's fat mass. She lifted her bulky knitting and fanned assiduously with it.

Her companion burst into a loud laugh.

"Eh, ma cousine, if you could see yourself!" she cried.

"It is true," said Rosalie, with composure, "I grow stouter; but at your age, Thérèse, I was slighter than you. It is the same with us all—at twenty we are thin, at thirty we are plump, and at forty—" She waved a fat hand over her expansive form and shrugged an explanatory shoulder, whilst her small eyes dwelt with a malicious expression on Thérèse's frowning face.

The girl lifted the handsomest shoulders in Paris. "I am not a stick," she observed, with that ready flush of hers; "it is these thin girls, whom one cannot see if one looks at them sideways, who grow so stout later on. I shall stay as I am, or maybe get scraggy—quel horreur!"—and she shuddered a little—"but it will not be yet awhile."

Rosalie nodded.

"You are not thirty yet," she said comfortably, "and you are a fine figure of a woman. 'T is a pity Citizen Dangeau cannot be made to see it!"

Up went Thérèse's head in a trice, and her bold colour mounted.

"Hé!"—she snorted contemptuously—"is he the world? Others are not so blind."

There was a pause. Rosalie knitted, smiling broadly, whilst Thérèse caught a second apple from a piled basket, and began to play with it.

"He is going away," said Rosalie abruptly, and Thérèse dropped the apple, which rolled away into a corner.

"Tctt, tctt," clicked Rosalie, "you have an open hand with other folk's goods, my girl! Yes, certainly Citizen Dangeau is going away, and why not? There is nothing to keep him here that I know of."

"For how long?" asked Thérèse, staring out of the window.

"One month, two, three—how do I know, my cabbage? It is business of the State, and in such matters, you should know more than I."

"When does he go?"

"To-morrow," said Rosalie cheerfully, for to torment Thérèse was a most exhilarating employment, and one that she much enjoyed. It vindicated her own virtue, and at the same time indulged her taste for gossip.

Thérèse sprang up, and paced the small shop with something wild in her gait.

"Why does he go?" she asked excitedly. "He used to smile at me, to look when he passed, and now he goes another way; he turns his head, he elbows me aside. Does he think I am one of those tame milk-and-water misses, who can be taken up one minute and dropped the next? If he thinks that, he is very much mistaken. Who has taken him from me? I insist on knowing; I insist that you tell me!"

"Chut," said Rosalie, with placid pleasure, "he never was yours to take, and that you know as well as I."

"He looked at me," and Thérèse's coarse contralto thrilled tragically over the words.

"Half Paris does that." Rosalie paused and counted her stitches. "One, two, three, four, knit two together. Why not? you are good to look at. No one has denied it that I know of."

"He smiled." Her eyes glared under the close-drawn brows, but Rosalie laughed.

"Not if you looked at him like that, I 'll warrant; but as to smiling—he smiles at me too, dear cousin."

Thérèse flung herself into a chair, with a sharp-caught breath.

"And at whom else? Tell me that, tell me that, for there is some one—some one. He thinks of her, he dreams of her, and pushes past other people as if they were posts. If I knew, if I only knew who it was——"

"Well?" said Rosalie curiously.

"I 'd twist her neck for her, or get Mme Guillotine to save me the trouble," said Thérèse viciously.

As she spoke, the door swung open, and Mlle de Rochambeau came in. She had been out to make some trifling purchase, and, nervous of the streets, she had hurried a good deal. Haste and the cold air had brought a bright colour to her cheeks, her eyes shone, and her breath came more quickly than usual.

Thérèse started rudely, and seeing her pass through the shop with the air of one at home, she started up, and with a quick spring placed herself between Mademoiselle and the inner door.

For a moment Aline hesitated, and then, with a murmured "Pardon," advanced a step.

"Who are you?" demanded Thérèse, in her roughest voice.

Rosalie looked up with an expression of annoyance. Really Thérèse and her scenes were past bearing, though they were amusing, for a little.

"I am Marie Roche," said Mademoiselle quietly. "I lodge here, and work for my living. Is there anything else you would like to ask me?"

Thérèse's eyes flashed, and she gave a loud, angry laugh.

"Eh—listen to her," she cried, "only listen. Yes, there is a good deal I should like to ask—amongst other things, where you got that face, and those hands, if your name is Marie Roche. Aristocrat, that is what you are—aristocrat!" and she pushed her flushed face close to Mademoiselle's rapidly paling one.

"Chut, Thérèse!" commanded Rosalie angrily.

"I say she is an aristocrat," shouted Thérèse, swinging round upon her cousin.

"Fiddlesticks," said Rosalie; "the girl's harmless, and her name's her own, right enough."

"With that face, those hands? Am I an imbecile?"

"Do I know, I?" and Rosalie shrugged her mountainous shoulders. "Bah, Thérèse, what a fuss about nothing. Is it the girl's fault if her mother was pretty enough to take the seigneur's fancy?"

The scarlet colour leapt into Mademoiselle's face. The rough tones, the coarse laugh with which Rosalie ended, and which Thérèse echoed, offended her immeasurably, and she was far from feeling grateful for the former's interference. She pushed past her opponent, and ran up the stairs without pausing to take breath.

Meanwhile Thérèse turned violently upon her cousin.

"Aristocrat or not, she has taken Dangeau from me," she screamed, with the sudden passion which makes her type so dangerous. "Why did you not tell me you had a girl in the house?—though what he can see in such a pinched, mincing creature passes me. Why did you not tell me, I say? Why? Why?"

"Eh, ma foi! because you fatigue me, you and your tempers," said Rosalie crossly. "Is this your house, par exemple, that I must ask you before I take any one to live in it? If the man likes you, take him, and welcome. I am not preventing you. And if he does n't like you, what can I do, I? Am I to say to him, 'Pray, Citizen Dangeau, be careful you do not speak to any girl, except my cousin Thérèse?' It is your own fault, not mine. Why did n't you marry like a respectable girl, instead of taking Heaven knows how many lovers? Is it a secret? Bah! all Paris knows it; and do you think Dangeau is ignorant? There was Bonnet, and Hébert, and young Cléry, and who knows how many since. Ciel! you tire me," and Rosalie bent over her knitting, muttering to herself, and picking fiercely at dropped stitches.

Thérèse picked up an apple and swung it from one hand to another, her brows level, the eyes beneath them dangerously veiled. Some day she would give herself the pleasure of paying her cousin Rosalie out for that little speech. Some day, but not to-day, she would tear those fat, creased cheeks with her nails, wrench out a few of the sleek black braids above, sink strangling fingers into the soft, fleshy rolls below. She gritted her teeth, and slipped the apple deftly to and fro. Presently she spoke in a tolerably natural voice:

"It is not every one who is so blind, voyez-vous, ma cousine."

As she spoke, Dangeau came through the shop door. He was in a hurry—these were days of hurry—and he hardly noticed that Rosalie was not alone, until he found Thérèse in his path. She was all bold smiles, and a glitter of black eyes, in a moment.

"The Citizen forgets an old friend."

"But no," he returned, smiling.

"It is so long since we met, that I thought the Citizen might have forgotten me."

"Is it so long?" asked Dangeau innocently; "surely I saw you somewhere lately. Ah, I have it—at the trial?"

"Ah, then you remember," cried Thérèse, clapping her hands.

Dangeau nodded, rather puzzled by her manner, and Rosalie permitted herself an audible chuckle. Thérèse turned on her with a flash, and as she did so Dangeau bowed, murmured an excuse, and passed on. This time Rosalie laughed outright, and the sound was like a spark in a powder-magazine. Red rage, violent, uncontrollable, flared in Thérèse's brain, and, all considerations of prudence forgotten, she launched herself with a tigress's bound straight at her cousin's ponderous form.

She had reckoned without her host.

Inside those fat arms reposed muscles of steel, behind those small pig's eyes lay a very cool, ruthless, and determined brain, and Thérèse felt herself caught, held, propelled across the floor, and launched into the street, all before she could send a second rending shriek after her first scream of fury.

Rosalie closed and latched the door, and sank panting, perspiring, but triumphant, into her seat again.

"Be calm," she observed, between her gasps; "be wise, and go home. For me, I bear no malice, but for you, my poor Thérèse, you will certainly die in an apoplexy some fine day if you excite yourself so much. Ouf—how out of breath I am!"

Thérèse stood rigid, her face convulsed with fury, her heart a black whirlpool of all the passions; but when Rosalie looked up again, after a vigorous bout of fanning, she was gone, and, with a sigh of relief, the widow Leboeuf settled once more to her placid morning's work.

The past fortnight had gone heavily for Mlle de Rochambeau. Since the days of the votings she had not seen Dangeau, for he had only returned late at night to snatch a few hours' sleep before the earliest daylight called him to his work again. She heard his step upon the stair, and turned from it, with something like a shudder. What times! what times! For the inconceivable was happening—the impossible had come to pass. What, was the King to die, and no one lift a hand to help? In open day, in his own capital? Surely there would be a sign, a wonder, and God would save the King. But now—God had not saved him—he was dead. All the previous day she had knelt, fasting, praying, and weeping, one of many hundreds who did likewise; but the knife had fallen, the blood royal was no longer inviolate—it flowed like common water, and was swallowed by the common earth. A sort of numb terror possessed Aline's very soul, and the little encounter with Thérèse gave it a personal edge.

As she sat, late into the evening, making good her yesterday's stint of embroidery, there came a footstep and a knocking at her door, and she rose to open it, trembling a little, and yet not knowing why she trembled since the step was a familiar one.

Dangeau stood without, his face worn and tired, but an eager light in his eyes.

"Will you spare me a moment?" he asked, motioning to his open door.

"Is it about the copying?" she said, hesitating.

"The copying, and another matter," he replied, and stood aside, holding the door for her to pass. She folded her work neatly, laid it down, and came silently into his room, where she remained standing, and close to the door.

Dangeau crossed to his table, asked her a trifling question or two about the numbering of the thickly written pages before him, and then paused for so long a space that the constraint which lay on Mademoiselle extended itself to him also, and rested heavily upon them both.

"I am going away to-morrow," he said at last.

"Yes, Citizen." It was her first word to him for many days, and he was struck by the altered quality of the soft tones.

They seemed to set him infinitely far away from her and her concerns, and it was surprising how much that hurt him.

Nevertheless he stumbled on:

"I am obliged to go; you believe that, do you not?"

"But, yes, Citizen." More distant still the voice that had rung friendly once, but behind the distance a weariness that spurred him.

"You are very friendless," he said abruptly. "You said that I might be your friend, and the first thing that I do is to desert you. If I had been given a choice—but one has obligations—it is a trust I cannot shirk."

"Monsieur is very good to trouble himself about me," said Mademoiselle softly. "I shall be safe. I am not afraid. See then, Citizen, who would hurt me? I live quietly, I earn my bread, I harm no one. What has any one so insignificant and poor as I to be afraid of? Would any one trouble to harm me?"

"God forbid!" said Dangeau earnestly. "Indeed, I think you are safe, or I would not go. In a month or six weeks, I shall hope to be back again. I do not know why I should be uneasy." He hesitated. "If there were a woman you could turn to, but there—my mother died ten years ago, and I know of no one else. But if a man's help would be of any use to you, you could rely on Edmond Cléry—see, I will give you his direction. He is young, but very much my friend, and you could trust him. Show him this"—he held out a small, folded note—"and I know he will do what he can."

Mademoiselle's colour was a little tremulous. His manner had taken suddenly so intimate, so possessive, a shade. Only half-conscious that she had grown to depend on him for companionship and safety, she was alarmed at discovering that his talk of her being alone, and friendless, could bring a lump into her throat, and set her heart beating.

"Indeed, Monsieur, there is no need," she protested, answering her own misgivings as much as his words. "I shall be safe. There is no one to harm me."

He put the note into her hand, and returned to the table, where he paused, looking strangely at her.

"So young, so friendless," beat his heart, "so alone, so unprotected. If I spoke now, should I lose all? Is she old enough to have learned their accursed lesson of the gulf between man and man—between loving man and the woman beloved? Surely she is too lonely not to yearn towards shelter." He made a half step towards her, and then checked himself, turning his head aside.

"Mademoiselle," he said earnestly, "you are very much alone in the world. Your order is doomed—it passes unregretted, for it was an evil thing. I do not say that every noble was bad, but every noble was nourished in a system that set hatred between class and class, and the outcome of that antagonism has been hundreds of years' oppression, lust, starvation, a peasantry crushed into bestiality by iniquitous taxes, and an aristocracy, relieved of responsibility, grown callous to suffering, sunk in effeteness and vice. There is a future now for the peasant, since the weight is off his back, and his children can walk erect, but what future is there for the aristocrat? I can see none. Those who would survive, must out from their camp, and set themselves to other ways of thought, and other modes of life." He paused, and glanced at her with a dawning hope in his eyes.

Mademoiselle de Rochambeau raised her head a little, proudly.

"Monsieur, I am of this order of which you speak," she said, and her voice was cold and still.

"You were of them, but now, where are they? The links that held you to them have been wrenched away. All is changed and you are free—the daughter of the new day of Liberty."

"Monsieur, one cannot change one's blood, one's race. I am of them."

"But one can change one's heart, one's faith," he cried hotly; and at that Mademoiselle's hand went to her bosom, as if the pressure of it could check the quick fluttering within.

"Not if one is Rochambeau," she said very low.

There was an instant's pause, whilst she drew a long breath, and then words came to her.

"Do you know, Monsieur, that for seven hundred years my people have kept their faith, and served the King and their order? In all those years there have been many men whom you would call bad men—I do not defend them—there have been cruel deeds done, and I shudder at them, but the worst man of them all would have died in torments before he would have accepted life at the price of honour, or come out from his order because it was doomed. That I think is what you ask me to do. I am a Rochambeau, Monsieur."

Her voice was icy with pride, and behind its soft curves, and the delicate colour excitement painted there, her face was inexorably set. The individuality of it became as it were a transparent veil, through which stared the inevitable attributes of the race, the hoarded instinct of centuries.

Dangeau's heart beat heavily. For a moment passion flared hot within him, only to fall again before her defenceless youth. But the breath of it beat upon her soul, and troubled it to the depths. She stood waiting, not knowing how to break the spell that held her motionless. Something warned her that a touch, a movement, might unchain some force unknown, but dreadful. It was as if she watched a rising sea—the long, long heaving stretch, as yet unflecked with foam, where wave after wave towered up as if about to break, yet fell again unbroken. The room was gone in a mist—there was neither past nor future. Only an eternal moment, and that steadily rising sea.

Suddenly broke the seventh wave, the wave of Fate.

In the mist Dangeau made an abrupt movement.

"Aline!" he said, lifting his eyes to her white face. "Aline!"

Mademoiselle de Rochambeau felt a tremor pass over her; she was conscious of a mastering, overwhelming fear. Like something outside herself, it caught her heart, and wrung it.

"No, no," said her trembling lips; "no, no."

With that he was beside her, catching her unresisting hand. Cold as ice it lay in his, and he felt it quiver.

"Oh, mon Dieu, are you afraid of me—of me?" he cried, in a hoarse whisper.

She tried to speak, but could not; something choked the sound, and she only stood there, mechanically focussing all her energies in an effort to stop the shivering, which threatened to become unbearable.

"Aline," he said again, "Aline, look at me."

He bent above her, nearer, till his face was on a level with her own, and his eyes drew hers to meet them. And his were full of all sweet and poignant things—love and home, and trust, and protection—they were warm and kind, and she so cold, and so afraid. It seemed as if her soul must go out to him, or be torn in two. Suddenly her fear of him had changed into fear of her own self. Did a Rochambeau mate thus? She saw the red steel, wet with the King's life, the steel weighted by the word of this man, and his fellows. She saw the blood gush out and flow between them in a river of separation. To pass it she must stain her feet—must stain her soul, with an uncleansable rust. It could not be—Noblesse oblige.

She caught her hand from his and put it quickly over her eyes.

"No, no, no—oh no, Monsieur," she cried, in a trembling whisper.

He recoiled at once, the light in his face dying out.

"It is no, for always?" he asked slowly.

She bent her head.

"For always, and always, and always?" he said again. "All the years, all the ways wanting you—never reaching you? Think again, Aline."

She rested her hand against the door and took a step away. It was more than she could bear, and a blind instinct of escape was upon her, but he was beside her before she could pass out.

"Is it because I am what I am, Jacques Dangeau, and not of your order?" he asked, in a sharp voice.

The change helped her, and she looked up steadily.

"Monsieur, one has obligations—you said it just now."

"Obligations?"

"And loyalties—to one's order, to one's King."

"Louis Capet is dead," he said heavily.

"And you voted for his death," she flashed at him, voice and eye like a rapier thrust.

He raised his head with pride.

"Yes, Mademoiselle, I voted for his death."

"That is a chasm no human power can bridge," she said, in a level voice. "It lies between us—the King's death, the King's blood. You cannot pass to come to me—I may not pass to come to you."

There was an infinite troubled loneliness behind the pride in her eyes, and it smote him through his anger.

"Adieu, Mademoiselle," he said in a low, constrained voice. He neither touched her hand, nor kissed it, but he bowed with as much proud courtesy as if he had been her equal in pride of race. "Adieu, Mademoiselle."

"Adieu, Monsieur."

She passed out, and heard the door close harshly behind her. It shut away—ah, what? The Might-have-been—the Forbidden—Eden perhaps? She could not tell. Bewildered, and exhausted, she fell on her knees in the dark by her narrow bed, and sobbed out all the wild confusion of her heart.

CHAPTER XIII

DISTURBING INSINUATIONS

February came in dreary, and bleak, and went out in torrents of rain. For Aline de Rochambeau a time of dull loneliness, and reaction, of hard grinding work, and insufficient food. She had to rise early, and stand in a line with other women, before she could receive the meagre dole of bread, which was all that the Republic One and Indivisible would guarantee its starving citizens. Then home again, faint and weary, to sit long hours, bent to catch the last, ultimate ray of dreary light, working fingers sore, and tired eyes red, over the fine embroidery for which she was so thankful still to find a sale.

All these wasted morning hours had to be made up for in the dusk and dark of the still wintry evenings. With hands stiff and blue, she must thread the fine needle, and hold the delicate fabric, working on, and on, and on. She did not sing at her work now, and the silence lay mournfully upon her heart.

"No tread on the stair, no passing step across the way.

What slow, long days—what empty, halting evenings."

Rosalie eyed her with a half-contemptuous pity in those days, but times were too hard for the pity to be more than a passing indulgence, and she turned to her own comfortable meals without a pang. Times were hard, and many suffered—what could one do?

"For me, I do not see that things are changed so wonderfully," sighed brown little Madeleine Rousse, Rosalie's neighbour.

Mlle de Rochambeau and she were standing elbow to elbow, waiting for the baker to open his doors, and begin the daily distribution.

"We were hungry before, and we are hungry now. Bread is as scarce, and the only difference is that there are more mouths to feed."

Her small face was pinched and drawn, and she sighed heavily, thinking of five clamouring children at home.

"Eh, Madeleine," cried Louison Michel, wife of that redoubtable Septembrist, Jean, the butcher. "Eh, be thankful that your last was not twins, as mine was. There was a misfortune, if you like, and I with six already! And what does that great stupid oaf of mine say but, 'Hé, Louison, what a pity it was not three!' 'Pity,' said I, and if I had been up and about, I warrant you I 'd have clouted him well; 'pity, indeed, and why?' Well, and what do you think—you 'd never guess. 'Oh,' says he, with a great sheep's grin on his face, 'we might have called them Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.' And there he stood as if he had said something clever. My word! If I was angry! 'The charming idea, my friend,' I said. 'I who have to work for them, whilst you make speeches at your section, what of me? Take that, and that,' said I, and I threw what was handy at him—Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, indeed!"

Madeleine sighed again, but an impudent-faced girl behind Aline whispered in her ear, "Jean Michel has one tyrant from whom the Republic cannot free him!"

Louison's sharp ears caught the words, or a part of them, and she turned with a swing that brought her hand in a resounding slap upon the girl's plump cheek, which promptly flamed with the marks of five bony fingers.

"Eh—Ma'mselle Impudence, so a wife mayn't keep her own husband in order? Perhaps you 'd like to come interfering? Best put your fingers in some one else's pies, and leave mine alone."

The girl sobbed angrily, and Louison emitted a vicious little snort, pushing on a pace as the distribution began, and the queue moved slowly forward.

A month before Mlle de Rochambeau would have shrunk and caught her breath, but now she only looked, and looked away.

At first these hours in the open street were a torture to the sensitive, gently-bred girl. Every eye that lighted upon her seemed to be stripping off her disguise, and she expected the tongue of every passer-by to proclaim and denounce her.

After the shock of the September massacres, it was impossible for her to realise that the greater part of those she encountered were plain, hungry, fellow-creatures, who cared little about politics, and much about their daily bread, but after a while she found she was one of a crowd—a speck, a dust mote, and that courage of the crowd, that sloughing of the individual, began to reassure her. She lost the sensation of being alone, the centre of observing eyes, and took her place as one of the great city's humble workers, waiting for her share of its fostering; and she began to find interest in the scenes of tragedy and comedy which those hours of waiting brought before her. The long standing was fatiguing, but without the fresh air and enforced companionship of these morning hours, she would have fared worse than she did. Brains of coarser fibre than hers gave way in those days, and the cells of the Salpêtrière could tell a sadder tale than even the prisons of Paris.

One day of drenching rain, as she stood shivering, her thin dress soaked, her hair wet and dripping, a heavy-looking, harpy-eyed creature stared long and curiously at her. The wind had caught Aline's hair, and she put up her slim hand smoothing it again. As she did so, the woman's eyes took a dull glare and she muttered:

"Aristocrat."

Terror teaches the least experienced to dissemble, and Mademoiselle had learned its lesson by now. Her heart bounded, but she managed a tolerably natural shrug of the shoulders, and answered in accents modelled on those of Rosalie:

"My good mother, I? The idea! I—but that amuses me," and she laughed; but the woman gave a sort of growl, shook her dripping head, and repeated hoarsely:

"Aristocrat, aristocrat," in a sort of chant, whilst the rain, following the furrows of the grimy, wrinkled cheeks, gave her an expression at once bleared and malignant.

"It is Mère Rabotin," said the woman at Mademoiselle's side. "She is a little mad. They shot her son last tenth of August, and since then she sees aristocrats and tyrants everywhere."

The old woman threw her a wicked glance.

"In you, I see nothing but a fat cow, whose husband beats her," she remarked venomously, and a laugh ran down the line, for the woman crimsoned, and held her tongue, being a rather stupid, garrulous creature destined to be put out of action at once by a sharp retort.

"But this"—pursued Mère Rabotin, fingering Mademoiselle's shrinking hand—"this is an aristocrat's hand. Fine and white, white and fine, and why, because it has never worked, never worked as honest hands do, and every night it has bathed in blood—ah, that is a famous whiteness, mes amis!"

Mademoiselle drew her hand away with a shudder, but recovering her self-possession, she held it up, still with that careful laugh.

"Why, Mère Rabotin," she cried, "see how it is pricked and worn. I work it to the bone, I can tell you, and get little enough even then."

"Aristocrat, aristocrat," repeated the hag, watching her all the time. "Fine white hands, and a black heart—blue blood, and a light name—no mercy or pity. Aristocrat!"

All the way it kept up, that half-mad drone. The women in front and behind shrugged impatient shoulders, staring a little, but not caring greatly.

Mademoiselle kept up her pose, played the poor seamstress, and played it well, with a sigh here, and a laugh there, and all the time in her ears the one refrain:

"Aristocrat, aristocrat!"

She came home panting, and lay on her bed listening for she knew not what, for quite an hour, before she could force her trembling fingers to their work again. Next day she stayed indoors, and starved, but the following morning hunger drove her out, and she went shaking to her place in the line of waiting citizens. The woman was not there, and she never saw her again. After awhile she ceased to feel alarmed. The feeling of being watched and stared at, wore off, and life settled down into a dull monotony of work, and waiting.

It was in these days that Rosalie made up her quarrel with Thérèse Marcel; and upon the reconciliation began a gradual alteration in the elder woman's habits. There were long absences from the shop, after which she would return flushed, and queer-eyed, to sit muttering over her knitting, and these absences became more and more frequent.

Mlle de Rochambeau, returning with her daily dole of bread, met her one day about to sally forth.

Thérèse was with her, and saluted Mademoiselle with a contemptuous laugh.

"Are you coming with us, Mlle White-face?" she called.

Aline shook her head with a civil smile.

"There are two women in to-day's batch—I have been telling Rosalie. She did n't mean to come, but that fetched her. She has n't seen a woman kiss Madame Guillotine yet, but the men find her very attractive, eh, Rosalie?"

Rosalie's broad face took on a dull flush, and her eyes became suddenly restless.

"Eh, Marie," she said, in a queer, thick voice. "Come along then—you sit and work all day, and in the end you will be ill. Every one must take a holiday some time, and it is exciting, this spectacle; I can tell you it is exciting. The first time I was like you, I said no, I can't, I can't; but see you, I could think of nothing else, and at last, Thérèse persuaded me. Then I sat, and shivered—yes, like a jelly—and saw ten knives, and ten heads, and half a dozen Citizen Sansons—but after that it went better, and better. Come, then, and see for yourself, Marie," and she put a heavy hand on the girl's shrinking shoulder.

White-faced, Aline recoiled.

"Oh, Citoyenne," she breathed, and shrank away.

Thérèse laughed loud.

"Oh, Citoyenne, Citoyenne," she mimicked. "Tender flower, pretty lamb, but the lamb's throat comes to the butcher's knife all the same," and her eyes were wicked behind their mockery.

"Have you heard any news of that fine lover of yours, since he rode away," she went on.

"I have no lover," answered Mademoiselle, the blood flaming into her thin cheeks.

"You are too modest, perhaps?" sneered Thérèse.

"I have not thought of such things."

"Such things—just hear her! What? you have not thought of Citizen Dangeau, handsome Citizen Dangeau, and he living in the same house, and closeted with you evening after evening, as our good Rosalie tells me? Does one do such things without thinking?"

Mademoiselle's flush had faded almost as it had risen, leaving her white and proud.

"Citoyenne, you are in error," she said quietly. "I am a poor girl with my bread to earn. The Citizen employed me to copy a book he had written. He paid well, and I was glad of the money."

"I dare say you were"—and Thérèse's coarse laugh rang out—"so he paid you well, and for copying, for copying—that was it, my pious Ste. Nitouche. Copying? Haha—I never heard it called that before!"

Mademoiselle turned haughtily away, only a deepening of her pallor showed that the insult had reached her, but Rosalie caught her cousin's arm with an impatient—"Tiens, Thérèse, we shall be late, we shall not get good places," and they went out, Thérèse still laughing noisily.

"Vile, vile, shameless woman," thought Aline, as she stood drawing long breaths before her open window.

The strong March wind blew in and seemed to fan her hot anger and shame into a blaze. "How dare she—how dare she!"

Woman-like, she laid the insult to Dangeau's account. It was another stone added to the wall which she set herself night and day to build between them. It rose apace, and this was the coping-stone. Now, surely, she was safe. Behind such a wall, so strong, so high, how could he reach her? And yet she was afraid, for something moved in the citadel, behind the bastion of defence—something that fluttered at his name, that ached in loneliness, and cried in the night—a traitor, but her very heart, inalienable flesh and blood of her. She covered her face, and wrestled, as many a time before, and after awhile she told herself—"It is conquered," and with a smile of self-scorn sat down again to her task too long delayed.

Outside, Paris went its way. Thousands were born, and died, and married, and betrothed, in spite of scarce bread, war on the frontiers, and prisons full to bursting.

The Mountain and the Gironde were only held from one another's throats by Danton's strong hand; but though their bickerings fill the historian's page, under the surface agitation of politics, the vast majority of the population went its own way, a way that varies very little under successive forms of government, since the real life of a people consists chiefly of those things about which historians do not write.

Tragedy had come down and stalked the streets of Paris, but there were thousands of eyes which did not see her. Those who did, talked loudly of it, and so it comes that we see the times through their eyes, and not through those of the silent and the blind.

In the south Dangeau made speech after speech. He wrote to Danton from Lyons:

"This place smoulders. Words are apt to prove oil on the embers. There are 900 prisoners, and constant talk of massacre. Chalier is a firebrand, the Mayor one of those moderate persons who provoke immoderate irritation in others. We are doing our best."

Danton frowned heavily over the curt sentences, drawing those black brows of his into a wrathful line. He turned to other letters from other Deputies, all telling the same weary tale of jangle and discord, strife and clamour of parties unappeased and unappeasable. Soon he would be at death-grips with the Gironde—force opposed to philosophy, action to eloquence, and philosophic eloquence would go to the guillotine shouting the Marseillaise.

His feet were set upon a bloody path, and one from which there was no returning. All Fate's force was in him and behind him, and he drove before it to his doom.

CHAPTER XIV

A DANGEROUS ACQUAINTANCE

It was in April that Fate began to concern herself with Mlle de Rochambeau once more. It was a day of spring's first exquisite sweetness—air like new-born life sparkling with wayward smiles, as the hurrying sunbeams glanced between one white cloud and the next; scent of all budding blossoms, and that good smell of young leafage and the wet, fecund earth.

On such a day, any heart, not crushed quite dumb and dry, must needs sparkle a little too, tremble a little with the renewal of youth, and sing a little because earth's myriad voices call for an echo.

Aline put on her worn print gown with a smile, and twisted her hair with a little more care than usual. After all, she was young, time passed, and life held sunshine, and the spring. She sang a little country air as she passed to and fro in the narrow room.

Outside it was delicious. Even in the dull street where she took her place in the queue the air smelled of young flowering things, and touched her cheeks with a soft, kissing breath, that brought the tender colour into them. Under the bright cerulean sky her eyes took the shade of dark forget-me-nots.

It was thus that Hébert saw her for the first time—one of Fate's tricks—for had he passed on a dull, rainy, day, he would have seen nothing but a pale, weary girl, and would have gone his way unnoticing, and unremembered, but to-day that spring bloom in the girl's heart seemed to have overflowed, and to sweeten all the air around her. The sparkle of the deep, sweet, Irish eyes met his cold, roving glance, and of a sudden changed it to an ugly, intent glitter. He passed slowly by, then paused, turned, and passed again.

When he went by for the second time, Aline became aware of his presence. Before, he had been one of the crowd, and she an unnoticed unit in it, but now, all at once, his glance seemed to isolate her from the women about her, and to set her in an insulting proximity to himself.

She looked down, coldly, and pressed slowly forward. After what seemed like a very long time, she raised her eyes for a moment, only to encounter the same fixed, insolent stare, the same pale smile of thick, unlovely lips.

With an inward shudder she turned her head, feeling thankful that the queue was moving at a good rate, and that the time of waiting was nearly over. It was not until she had secured her portion that she ventured to look round again, and, to her infinite relief, the coast was clear. With a sigh of thankfulness she turned homewards, plunging her thoughts for cleansing into the fresh loveliness of the day.

Suddenly in her ear a smooth, hateful voice:

"Why do you hurry so, Citoyenne?"

She did not look up, but quickened her pace.

"But, Citoyenne, a word—a look?"

Hébert's smile broadened, and he slipped a dexterous arm about the slim waist, and bent to catch the blue glance of her eyes. Experience taught him that she would look up at that. She did, with a flame of contempt that he thought very becoming. Blue eyes were apt to prove insipid when raised, but the critic in him acknowledged these as free from fault.

"Citizen!" she exclaimed, freeing herself with an unexpectedly strong movement. "How dare you! Oh, help me, Louison, help me!"

In the moment that he caught her again she had seen the small, wiry figure of Jean Michel's wife turn the corner.

"Louison, Louison Michel!" she called desperately.

Next moment Hébert was aware of some one, under-sized and shrivelled looking, who whirled tempestuously upon him, with an amazing flow of words.

"Oh, my Ste. Géneviève! And is a young girl not to walk unmolested to her home. Bandit! assassin! tyrant! pig! devil! species of animal, go then—but on the instant—and take that, and that, to remember an honest woman by,"—the first "that" being a piece of his hair torn forcibly out, and thrown into his perspiring face, and the second, a most superlative slap on the opposite cheek.

He was left gasping for breath and choking with fury, whilst the whirlwind departed with as much suddenness as it had come, covering the girl's retreat with shaken fist, and shrill vituperation.

After a moment he sent a volley of curses in her wake. "Fury! Magaera!" he muttered. "So that is Jean Michel's wife! If she were mine, I 'd wring her neck."

He thought of his meek wife at home, and laughed unpleasantly.

"For the rest, she has done the girl no good by interfering." This was unfortunately the case. Hébert's eye had been pleased, his fancy taken; but a few passing words, a struggle may be, ending in a kiss, had been all that was in his thought. Now the bully in him lifted its head, urging his jaded appetite, and he walked slowly after the women until he saw Mademoiselle leave her companion, and enter Rosalie's shop. An ugly gleam came into his eyes—so this was where she lived! He knew Rosalie Leboeuf by sight and name; knew, too, of her cousinship with his former mistress, Thérèse Marcel, and he congratulated himself venomously as he strolled forward and read the list of occupants which, as the law demanded, was fixed on the front of the house at a distance of not more than five feet from the ground:

"Rosalie Leboeuf, widow, vegetable seller, aged forty-six. Marie Roche, single, seamstress, aged nineteen. Jacques Dangeau, single, avocat, aged twenty-eight,"—and after the last name an additional notice—"absent on business of the Convention."

Hébert struck his coarse hands together with an oath. Dangeau—Dangeau, now it came back to him. Dangeau was infatuated with some girl, Thérèse had said so. He laughed softly, for Thérèse had gone into one of her passions, and that always amused him. If it were this girl? If it were—if it only were, why, what a pleasure to cut Dangeau out, and to let him find on his return that the bird had flown to a nest of Hébert's feathering.

There might be even more in it than that. The girl was no common seamstress; pooh—he was not stupid—he could see as far into a brick wall as others. Even at the first glance he had seen that she was different, and when her eyes blazed, and she drew herself from his grasp, why, the aristocrat stood confessed. Anger is the greatest revealer of all.

Madame la Roturière may dress her smiling face in the mode of Mme l'Aristocrate; may tune her company voice to the same rhythm; but put her in a passion, and see how the mud comes boiling up from the depths, and how the voice so smooth and suave just now, rings out in its native bourgeois tones.

Hébert knew the difference as well as another, and his thoughts were busy. Aristocrat disguised, spelled aristocrat conspiring, and a conspiring aristocrat under the same roof as Jacques Dangeau, what did that spell?

He rubbed his pale fat hands, where the reddish hair showed sickly, and strolled away thinking wicked thoughts. Plots were the obsession of the day, and, to speak the truth, there were enough and to spare, but patriot eyes were apt to see double, and treble, when drunk with enthusiasm, and to detect a conspirator when there was only a victim. Plots which had never existed gave hundreds to the knife, and the populace shouted themselves into a wilder delirium.

Did the price of bread go up? Machinations of Pitt in England. Did two men quarrel, and blows pass? "Monarchist!" shouted the defeated one, and presently denounced the other.

Had a woman an inconvenient husband, why, a cry of "Austrian Spy!" and she might be comfortably rid of him for ever.

Evil times for a beautiful, friendless girl upon whom gross Hébert cast a wishful eye!

He walked into the shop next day, and accosted Rosalie with Republican sternness of manner.

"Good-day, Citoyenne Leboeuf."

Rosalie was fluttered. Her nerves were no longer quite so reliable as they had been. Madame Guillotine's receptions were disturbing them, and in the night she would dream horribly, and wake panting, with her hands at her fat throat.

"Citizen Hébert," she murmured.

He bent a cold eye upon her, noting a beaded brow.

"You have a girl lodging here—Marie Roche?"

"Assuredly, Citizen."

"I must speak to her alone."

Rosalie rallied a little, for Hébert had a certain reputation, and Louison had not held her tongue.

"I will call her down," she said, heaving her bulky form from its place.

"No, I will go up," said Hébert, still with magisterial dignity.

"Pardon me, Citizen Deputy, she shall come down."

"It is an affair of State. I must speak privately with her," he blustered.

Rosalie's eyes twinkled; her nerves were steadying. They had begun to require constant stimulation, and this answered as well as anything else.

"Bah," she said. "I shall not listen to your State secrets. Am I an eavesdropper, or inquisitive? Ask any one. That is not my character. You may take her to the farther end of the shop, and speak as low as you please, but, she is a young girl, this is a respectable house, and see her alone in her room you shall not, not whilst she is under my care."

"That privilege being reserved for my colleague, Citizen Dangeau," sneered Hébert.

"Tchtt," said Rosalie, humping a billowy shoulder—"the girl is virtuous and hard-working, too virtuous, I dare say, to please some people. Yes, that I can very well believe," and her gaze became unpleasantly pointed—"Well, I will call her down."

She moved to the inner door as she spoke, and called up the stair: "Marie! Marie Roche! Descend then; you are wanted."

Hébert stood aside with an ill grace, but he was quite well aware that to insist might, after yesterday's scene, bring the whole quarter about his ears, and effectually spoil the ingenious plans he was revolving in his mind.

He moved impatiently as Mademoiselle delayed, and, at the sound of her footstep, started eagerly to meet her.

She came in quite unsuspiciously, looking at Rosalie, and at first seeing no one else. When Hébert's movements brought him before her, she turned deadly white, and a faintness swept over her. She caught the door, fighting it back, till it showed only in that change of colour, and a rather fixed look in the dark blue eyes.

Hébert checked a smile, and entrenched himself behind his office.

"You are Marie Roche, seamstress?"

"Certainly, Citizen."

"Father's and mother's names?"

"By what right do you question me?" the voice was icy with offence, and Rosalie stirred uneasily.

"It is the Citizen Deputy Hébert; answer him," she growled—and Hébert commended her with a look.

Really this was amusing—the girl had spirit as well as beauty. Decidedly she was worth pursuing.

"Father's and mother's names?" he repeated.

Mademoiselle bit her lip, and gave the names she had already given when she took out her certificate of Citizenship.

They were those of her foster-parents, and had she not had that rehearsal, she might have faltered, and hesitated. As it was, her answer came clear and prompt.

Hébert scowled.

"You are not telling the truth," he observed in offensive tones, expecting an outburst, but Mlle de Rochambeau merely looked past him with an air of weary indifference.

"I am not satisfied," he burst out. "If you had been frank and open, you would have found me a good friend, but I do not like lies, and you are telling them. Now I am not a safe person to tell lies to, not at all—remember that. My friendship is worth having, and you may choose between it and my enmity, my virtuous Citoyenne."

Mademoiselle raised her delicate eyebrows very slightly.

"The Citizen does me altogether too much honour," she observed, her voice in direct contradiction to her words.

"Tiens," he said, losing self-control, "you are a proud minx, and pride goes before a fall. Are you not afraid? Come," dropping his voice, as he caught Rosalie's ironical eye—"Come, be a sensible girl, and you shall not find me hard to deal with. I am a slave to beauty—a smile, a pleasant look or two, and I am your friend. Come then, Citoyenne Marie."

Mademoiselle remained silent. She looked past Hébert, at the street. Rosalie got up exasperated, and pulled her aside.

"Little fool," she whispered, "can't you make yourself agreeable, like any other girl. Smile, and keep him off. No one wants you to do more. The man 's dangerous, I tell you so, I—— You 'll ruin us all with your airs and graces, as if he were the mud under your feet."

Aline turned from her in a sudden despair.

"I am a poor, honest girl, Citizen," she said imploringly. "I have no time for friendship. I have to work very hard, I harm nobody."

"But a friend," suggested Hébert, coming a little closer, "a friend would feel it a privilege to do away with that necessity for hard work."

Mademoiselle's pallor flamed. She turned sharply away, feeling as if she had been struck.

"Good-day, Citizen," she said proudly; "you have made a mistake," and she passed from Rosalie's detaining hand.

Hébert sent an oath after her. He was most unmagisterially angry. "Fool," he said, under his breath—"Damned fool."

Rosalie caught him up.

"He is a fool who wastes his time trying to pick the apple at the top of the tree, when there are plenty to his hand," she observed pointedly.

He swore at her then, and went out without replying.

From that day a period of terror and humiliation beyond words set in for Mlle de Rochambeau. Hebert's shadow lay across her path, and she feared him, with a sickening, daily augmenting fear, that woke her gasping in the night, and lay on her like a black nightmare by day.

Sometimes she did not see him for days, sometimes every day brought him along the waiting queue, until he reached her side, and stood there whispering hatefully, amusing himself by alternately calling the indignant colour to her cheeks, and replacing it by a yet more indignant pallor.

The strain told on her visibly, the thin cheeks were thinner, the dark eyes looked darker, and showed unnaturally large and bright, whilst the violet stains beneath them came to stay.

There was no one to whom she could appeal. Rosalie was furious with her and her fine-lady ways. Louison, and the other neighbours, who could have interfered to protect her from open insult, saw no reason to meddle so long as the girl's admirer confined himself to words, and after the first day Hébert had not laid hands on her again.

The torture of the man's companionship, the insult of his look, were beyond their comprehension.

Meanwhile, Hébert's passing fancy for her beauty had changed into a dull, malignant resolve to bend, or break her, and through her to injure Dangeau, if it could possibly be contrived.

Women had their price, he reflected. Hers might not be money, but it would perhaps be peace of mind, relief from persecution, or even life—bare life.

After the first few days he gave up the idea of bringing any set accusation against Dangeau. The man was away, his room locked, and Rosalie would certainly not give up the key unless a domiciliary visit were paid—a thing involving a little too much publicity for Hébert's taste. Besides, he knew very well that rummage as he might, he would find no evidence of conspiracy. Dangeau was an honest man, as he was very well aware, and he hated him a good deal the more for the inconvenient fact. No, it would not do to denounce Dangeau without some very plain evidence to go upon. The accuser of Danton's friend might find himself in an uncommonly tight place if his accusations could not be proved. It would not do—it was not good enough, Hébert decided regretfully; but the girl remained, and that way amusement beckoned as well as revenge. If she remained obstinate, and if Dangeau were really infatuated, and returned to find her in prison, he might easily be tempted to commit some imprudence, out of which capital might be made. That was a safer game, and might prove just as well worth playing in the end. Meanwhile, was the girl Marie Roche, and nothing more? Did that arresting look of nobility go for nothing, or was she playing a part? If Rosalie knew, Thérèse might help. Now how fortunate that he had always kept on good terms with Thérèse.

He took her a pair of gold ear-rings that evening, and whilst she set them dangling in her ears, he slipped an arm about her, and kissed her smooth red cheek.

"Morbleu!" he swore, "you 're a handsome creature, Thérèse; there 's no one to touch you."

"What do you want?" asked Thérèse, with a shrewd glance into his would-be amorous eyes.

"What, ma belle? What should I want? A kiss, if you 'll give it me. Ah! the old days were the best."

Thus Hébert, disclaiming an ulterior motive.

Thérèse frowned, and twitched away from him.

"Ma foi, Hébert, am I a fool?" she returned, with a shrug. "You 've forgotten a lot about those same old days if you think that. I 'll help you if I can, but don't try and throw sand in my eyes, or you 'll get some of it back, in a way that will annoy you"; and her black eyes flared at him in the fashion he always admired. He thought her at her best like that, and said so now.

"Chut!" she said impatiently. "What is it that you want?"

Hébert considered.

"You see your cousin sometimes, the widow Leboeuf, who has the shop in the rue des Lanternes?"

"I see her often enough, twice—three times a week at present."

"Could you get something out of her?"

"Not if she knew I wanted to. Close as a miser's fist, that's what Rosalie is, if she thinks she can spite you; but just now we are very good friends—and, well, I dare say it might be done. Depends what it is you want to know."

Hébert looked at her keenly.

"Perhaps you can tell me," he said, watching her face. "That girl who lodges there, who is she? What is her name—her real name?"

In a flash Thérèse was crimson to the hair, and he had her by the wrist, swinging her round to face him.

"Oho!" she cried, laughing till the new ear-rings tinkled, "so that's it—that's the game? Well, if you can give that stuck-up aristocrat the setting-down I 've promised her ever since I first saw her, I 'm with you."

Hébert pounced on one word, like a cat.

"Aristocrat? Ah! I thought so," he said, his breathing quickening a little. "Who is she, then, ma mie?"

Thérèse regarded him with a little scorn. She did not care who got Hébert, since she had done with him herself, but what, par exemple, did he see in a pale stick like that—and after having admired her, Thérèse? Certainly men were past understanding.

She lolled easily on the arm of the chair.

"I 've not an idea, but I dare say I could find out—that is, if Rosalie knows."

"Well, when you do, there 'll be a chain to match the ear-rings," said Hébert, his arm round her waist again.

All the same, April had passed into May before Thérèse won her chain.

It was in the time between that Hébert haunted Mlle de Rochambeau's footsteps, and employed what he considered his most seductive arts, producing only a sensation of shuddering defilement from which neither prayer nor effort could free her thoughts. One day, goaded past endurance, she left Dangeau's folded note at the door of Cléry's lodging. When it had left her hand, she would have given the world to have it back. How could she speak to a man of this shameful pursuit of Hébert? How, having put Dangeau out of her life, could she use his help, and appeal to his friend? And yet, how endure the daily shame, the nightly agony of remembering those smooth, poisonous whispers, that pale, dreadful smile? She cried her eyes red and swollen, and Edmond Cléry, looking up from a bantering exchange of compliments with Rosalie, wondered as she came in, first if this could be she, and then at his friend's taste. He permitted himself a complacent memory of Thérèse's glowing cheeks and supple curves, and commended his own choice. Rosalie's needles clicked amiably. She liked young men, and this was a personable one. What a goose this girl was, to be sure!—like a frightened rabbit with Hébert, and now with this amiable young man, shrinking, white-faced! Bah! she had no patience with her.

Edmond bowed smilingly.

"My homage, Citoyenne," he said.

Aline forced a "Bonjour, Citizen," and then fell silent again. Ah! why had she left the note—why, why, why?

Cléry began to pity her plight, for there was something chivalrous in him which rose at the sight of her obvious unhappiness, and he gave the impulse rein.

"Will you not tell me how I can serve you?" he said in his gentlest voice. "It will be both a pleasure and an honour."

Aline raised her tired eyes to his, and read kindness in the open glance.

"You are very good," she said slowly, and looked past him with a hesitating air.

Rosalie was busy serving at the moment, and a shrill argument over the price of cabbage was in process. She stepped closer, and spoke very low.

"Citizen Dangeau said I might trust you, Citizen."

"Indeed you may; I am his friend and yours."

Even then the colour rose a little at this linking of their names. The impulse towards confidence increased.

"I am in trouble, Citizen, or I should not have asked your help. There is a man who follows, insults me, threatens even, and I am without a protector."

"Not if you will confide that honour to me," said Cléry quickly.

She smiled faintly.

"You are very good."

"But who is it? Tell me his name, and I will see that you are not molested in future."

"It is the Citizen Deputy Hébert," faltered Aline, all her terror returning as she pronounced the hateful name.

Clary's brows drew close, and a long whistle escaped his lips.

"Oho, Hébert," he said,—"Hébert; but there, Citoyenne, do not be alarmed, I beg of you. Leave it to me"; after which he made his adieux without conspicuous haste, leaving Rosalie much annoyed at having missed most of the conversation.

Two days later, Hébert came foaming in on Thérèse. When he could speak, he swore at her.

"See here, Thérèse, if you 've a hand in setting Cléry at me, let me warn you. I 'll take foul play from no woman alive, without giving as good as I get, and if there 's any of your damned jealousy at work, you she-devil, I 'll choke you as soon as look at you, and with a great deal more pleasure!"

Thérèse stepped up to him and fixed her great black eyes on his pale, twitching ones.

"Don't be so silly, Hébert," she said steadily, though her colour rose. "What is it all about? What has young Cléry done to you? It 's rather late in the day for you to start quarrelling."

"Did you flatter yourself it was about you?" said Hébert brutally. "Not much, my girl; I've fresher fish to fry. But he came up to me an hour ago, and informed me he had been looking for me everywhere to tell me my pursuit of that pattern of virtue, our good Dangeau's mistress, must cease, or I 'd have him to reckon with, and what I want to know is, have you a hand in this, or not?"

Thérèse was heavily flushed, and her eyes curiously veiled.

"What! Cléry too?" she said in a deep whisper. "Dangeau, and you, and Cléry. Eh! I wish her joy of my cast-off clouts. But she shall pay—Holy Virgin, she shall pay!"

Hébert caught her by the shoulder and shook it.

"What are you muttering? I ask you a plain question, and you don't answer it. What about Cléry—did you set him on?"

She threw back her head at that, and gave a long, wild laugh.

"Imbécile!" she screamed. "I? Do you hate him? Well, think how I must love him when he too goes after this girl—goes to her from me, from swearing I am his goddess, his inspiration? Ah!"—she caught at her throat,—"but at least I can give you his head. The fool—the fool to betray a woman who holds his life in her hands! Here is what the imbecile wrote me only a week ago. Read, and say if it 's not enough to give him to the embraces of the Guillotine?"

The paper she thrust at Hébert came from her bosom, and when he had read it his dull eyes glittered.

"'The King's death a crime—perhaps time not ripe for a Republic.' Thérèse, you 're worth your weight in gold. I don't think Edmond Cléry will write you any more love-letters."

Thérèse drew gloomily away.

"And the girl?" she asked, with a shiver.

"That, my dear, was to depend on what you could find out about her," Hébert reminded her.

His own fury had subsided, and he threw himself into a chair. Thérèse made an abrupt movement.

"There is nothing more to find out. I have it all."

"You 've been long enough getting it," said Hébert, sitting up.

"Well, I have it now, and I told you all along that Rosalie was more obstinate than a mule. She has been in one of her silent moods; she would go to all the executions, and then, instead of being a pleasant companion, there she would sit quite mum, or muttering to herself. Yesterday, however, she seemed excited. There was a large batch told off, three women amongst them, and one of them shrieked when Sanson took her kerchief off. That seemed to wake Rosalie up. She got quite red, and began to talk as if she had a fever."

"It is one you have caught from her, then," said Hébert impatiently. "The news, my girl, the news! What do I care for your cousin and her tantrums?"

Thérèse looked dangerous.

"Am I your cat's-paw, Hébert?" she said. "Pah! do your own dirty work—you 'll get no more from me."

Hébert cursed his impatience—fool that he was not to remember Thérèse's temper!

He forced an ugly smile.

"Oh, well, as you please," he said. "Let the girl go. There are other fish in the sea. Best let Cléry go too, and then they can make a match of it, unless she should prefer Dangeau."

His intent eyes saw the girl's face change at that. "A thousand devils!" she burst out. "Why do you plague me, Hébert? Be civil and play fair, and you 'll get what you want."

"Come, come, Thérèse," he said soothingly. "We both want the same thing—to teach a stuck-up baggage of an aristocrat a lesson. Let's be friends again, and give me the news. Is it any good?"

"Good enough," said Thérèse, with a sulky look,—"good enough to take her out of my way, if I say the word. Why, she 's a cousin of the ci-devant Montargis, who got so prettily served on the third of September."

"What?" exclaimed Hébert.

"Ah! you never guessed that, and you 'd never have got it out of Rosalie; for she 's as close as the devil, and I believe has a sneaking fondness for the girl."

"The Montargis!" repeated Hébert, rubbing his hands, slowly. This was better than he expected. No wonder the girl went in terror! He had heard the Paris mob howl for the blood of the Austrian spy, and he knew that a word now would seal her fate.

"Her name?" he demanded.

"Rochambeau—Aline de Rochambeau. She only clipped the tail off, you see, and with a taste that way, she should have no objection to a head clipping—eh, my friend?" said Thérèse, with a short laugh.

Hébert went off with his plans made ready to his hand. It pleased him to be able to ruin Cléry, since Cléry had crossed his path; and besides, it would terrify the girl, and annoy Dangeau, who had a liking for the boy. It was inconceivable that he should have been so imprudent as to trust a woman like Thérèse, but since he had been such a fool he must just pay for it with his head.

The truth was that Cléry during his service at the Temple had been strangely impressed, like many another, by the bearing of the unfortunate Royal Family, and had conceived a young, whole-hearted adoration for the Queen, which did not, unfortunately for himself, interfere with his wholly mundane passion for Thérèse Marcel. In a moment of extraordinary imprudence he made the latter his confidante, never doubting that her love for himself would make her a perfectly safe one. Poor lad! he was to pay a heavy price for his trust.

On the day following Hébert's interview with Thérèse he was arrested, and after a short preliminary examination, which revealed to him her treachery and his dangerous position, he was lodged in the Abbaye.

His arrest made some little stir in his own small world. Thérèse herself brought the news of it to the rue des Lanternes. Her eyes were very bright and hard as she glanced round the shop, and she laughed louder than usual, as she threw out broad hints as to her own share in the matter, for she liked Rosalie to know her power.

"I think you are a devil, Thérèse," said the fat woman gloomily.

"So others have said," returned Thérèse, with a wicked smile.

Mlle de Rochambeau took the blow in deadly silence. Hope was dead in her heart, and she prayed earnestly that she alone might suffer, and not have the wretchedness of feeling she had drawn another into the net which was closing around her.

Hébert dallied yet a day or two, and then struck home. Aline was hurrying homewards, her ears strained for the step she had grown to expect, when all in a minute he was there by her side.

She turned on him with a sudden resolve.

"Citizen," she said earnestly, "why do you persecute me? What have I done to you—to any one? Surely by now you realise that this pursuit is useless?"

"The day that I realise that will be a bad day for you," said Hébert, with malignant emphasis.

The threat brought her head up, with one of those movements of mingled pride and grace which made him hate and covet her.

"I have done no wrong—what harm can you do me?" she said steadily.

"I have interest with the Revolutionary Tribunal—you may have heard of the arrest of our young friend Cléry? Ah! I thought so,"—as her colour faded under his cruel gaze.

She shrank a little, but forced her voice to composure. "And does the Revolutionary Tribunal concern itself with the affairs of a poor girl who only asks to be allowed to earn her living honestly?"

Hébert smiled—a smile so wicked that she realised an impending blow, and on the instant it fell.

"It would concern itself with the affairs of Mlle de Rochambeau, cousin of the ci-devant Marquise de Montargis, who, if my memory serves me right, was arrested on a charge of treasonable correspondence with Austria, and who met a well-deserved fate at the hands of an indignant people." He leaned closer as he spoke, and marked the instant stiffening of each muscle in the white face.

For a moment her heart had stopped. Then it raced on again at a deadly speed. She turned her head away that he might not see the terror in her eyes, and a keen wind met her full, clearing the faintness from her brain.

She walked on as steadily as she might, but the smooth voice was still at her ear.

"You are in danger. My friendship alone can save you. What do you hope for? The return of your lover Dangeau? I don't think I should count on that if I were you, my angel. Once upon a time there was a young man of the name of Cléry—Edmond Cléry to be quite correct—yes, I see you know the story. No, I don't think your Dangeau will be of any assistance to you when I denounce you, and denounce you I most certainly shall, unless you ask me not to, prettily, with your arms round my neck, shall we say—eh, Citoyenne Marie?"

As he spoke there was a rumble of wheels, and a rough cart came round the corner towards them. He touched her arm, and she looked up mechanically, to see that it held from eight to ten persons, all pinioned, and through her own dull misery she was aware of pity stirring at her heart, for these were prisoners on their way to the Place de la Revolution.

One was an old man, very white and thin, his scanty hair straggling above a stained, uncared-for coat, his misty blue eyes looking out at the world with the unseeing stare of the blind or dying. Beside him leaned a youth of about fifteen, whose laboured breath spoke of the effort by which he preserved an appearance of calm. Beyond them was a woman, very handsome and upright. Her hair, just cut, floated in short, ragged wisps about her pale, set face. Her lips moved constantly, her eyes looked down. Hébert laughed and pointed as the cart went by.

"That is where you 'll be if I give the word," he whispered. "Choose, then—a place there, or a place here,"—and he made as if to encircle her with his arm,—"choose, ma mie."

Aline closed her eyes. All her young life ran hotly in her veins, but the force of its recoil from the man beside her was stronger than the force of its recoil from death.

"The Citizen insults me when he assumes there is a choice," she said, with cold lips.

"The prison is so attractive then? The embraces of the Guillotine so preferable to mine—hein?"

"The Citizen has expressed my views."

Hébert cursed and flung away, but as she moved on he was by her side again.

"After all," he said, "you may change your mind again. Until to-morrow, I can save you."

"Citizen, I shall never change my mind. There is no choice; it is simply that."

An inexorable decision looked from her face, and carried conviction even to him.

"One cannot save imbeciles," he muttered as he left her.

Mademoiselle walked home with an odd sense of relief. Now that the first shock was over, and the danger so long anticipated was actually upon her, she was calm. At least Hébert would be gone from her life. Death was clean and final; there would be no dishonour, no soiling of her ears by that sensual voice, nor of her eyes by those evil glances.

She knelt and prayed for a while, and sat down to her work with hands that moved as skilfully as before.

That night she slept more peacefully than she had done for weeks. In her dreams she walked along a green and leafy lane, birds sang, and the sky burned blue in the rising sun. She walked, and breathed blissful air, and was happy.

Out of such dreams one awakes with a sense of the unreality of everyday life. Some of the glamour clings about us, and we see a mirage of happiness instead of the sands of the Desert of Desolation. Is it only mirage, or some sense sealed, except at rarest intervals?—a sense before whose awakened exercise the veil wears thin, and from behind we catch the voices of the withdrawn, we feel the presence of peace, and garner a little of the light of Eternity to shed a glow on Time.

Aline woke happily to a soft May dawn. Her dream lay warm against her heart and cherished it.

In the evening she was arrested and taken to the prison of the Abbaye.

CHAPTER XV

SANS SOUCI

In after days Aline de Rochambeau looked back upon her time in prison as a not unpeaceful interlude between two periods of stress and terror. After loneliness unspeakable, broken only by companionship with the coarse, the dull, the cruel, she found herself in the politest society of France, and in daily, hourly contact with all that was graceful, exquisite, and refined in her own sex,—gallant, witty, and courteous in the other.

When she joined the other prisoners on the morning after her arrest, the scene surprised her by its resemblance to that ill-fated reception which had witnessed at once her debut and her farewell to society. The dresses were a good deal shabbier, the ladies' coiffures not quite so well arranged, but there was the same gay, light talk, the same bowing and curtsying, the same air of high-bred indifference to all that did not concern the polite arts.

All at once she became very acutely conscious of her bourgeoise dress and unpowdered hair. She felt the roughness of her pricked fingers, and experienced that painful sense of inferiority which sometimes afflicts young girls who are unaccustomed to the world. The sensation passed in a flash, but the memory of it stung her not a little, and she crossed the room with her head held high.

The old Comtesse de Matigny eyed her through a tortoise-shell lorgnette which bore a Queen's cipher in brilliants, and had been a gift from Marie Antoinette.

"Who is that?" she demanded, in her deep, imperious tones.

"Some little bourgeoise, accused of Heaven knows what," shrugged M. de Lancy.

The old lady allowed hazel eyes which were still piercing to rest for a moment longer on Aline. Then they flashed mockingly on M. le Marquis.

"My friend, you are not as intelligent as usual. Did you see the girl's colour change when she came in? When a bourgeoise is embarrassed, she hangs her head and walks awkwardly. If she had an apron on, she would bite the corner. This girl looked round, and flushed,—it showed the fine grain of her skin,—then up went her head, and she walked like a princess. Besides, I know the face."

A slight, fair woman, with tired eyes which looked as if the colour had been washed from them by much weeping, leaned forward. She was Mme de Créspigny, and her husband had been guillotined a fortnight before.

"I have seen her too, Madame," she said in an uninterested sort of way, "but I cannot recall where it was."

Mme la Comtesse rapped her knee impatiently with a much-beringed hand.

"It is some one she reminds me of," she said at last—"some one long ago, when I was younger. I never forget a face, I always prided myself on that. It was at Court—long ago—those were gay days, my friends. Ah! I have it. La belle Irlandaise, Mlle Desmond, who married— Now, who did Mlle Desmond marry? It is I who am stupid to-day. It is the cold, I think."

"Was it Henri de Rochambeau?" said De Lancy.

She nodded vivaciously.

"It was—yes, that was it, and I danced at their wedding, and dreamed on a piece of the wedding-cake. I shall not say of whom I dreamed, but it was not of feu M. le Comte, for I had never seen him then. Yes, yes, Henri de Rochambeau, and la belle Irlandaise. They were a very personable couple, and why they saw fit to go and exist in the country, Heaven alone knows—and perhaps his late Majesty, who did Mme de Rochambeau the honour of a very particular admiration."

"And she objected, chère Comtesse?" De Lancy's tone was one of pained incredulity.

Chère Comtesse shrugged her shoulders delicately.

"What would you?" she observed. "She was as beautiful as a picture, and as virtuous as if Our Lady had sat for it. It even fatigued one a little, her virtue."

Her own had bored no one—she had not permitted it any such social solecism.

"I remember," said De Lancy; "they went down to Rochambeau, and expired there of dulness and each other's unrelieved society."

Mme de Créspigny had been looking attentively at Aline. "Now I know who the girl is," she said. "It is the girl who disappeared, who was supposed to have been massacred. I saw her at Laure de Montargis' reception the day of the arrests, and I remember her now. Ah! that poor Laure——"

She shuddered faintly. De Lancy became interested.

"But she accompanied her cousin to La Force and perished there."

"She must have escaped. I am sure it is she. She had that way of holding her head—like a stag—proud and timid."

"It was one of her mother's attractions," said the Comtesse. "Mlle Desmond was, however, a great deal more beautiful. Her daughter, if this girl is her daughter, has only that trick, and the eyes—yes, she has the lovely eyes," as Aline turned her head and looked in their direction. "M. de Lancy, do me the favour of conducting her here, and presenting her to me."

The little old dandy clicked away on his high heels, and in a moment Mademoiselle was aware of a truly courtly bow, whilst a thin, shaky voice said gallantly:

"We rejoice to welcome Mademoiselle to our society."

She curtsied—a graceful action—and Madame de Matigny watching, nodded twice complacently. "Bourgeoise indeed!" she murmured, and pressed her lips together.

"You are too good, Monsieur," said Mademoiselle.

Only four words, but the voice—the composure.

"Madame la Comtesse is right, as always; she is certainly one of us," thought De Lancy.

"Madame la Comtesse de Matigny begs the honour of your acquaintance," he pursued; "she had the pleasure of knowing your parents."

"Monsieur?"

"Do I not address Mlle de Rochambeau?"

Surprise, and a sense of terror at hearing her name, so long concealed, brought the colour to her face.

"That is my name," she murmured.

"She is always right—she is wonderful," repeated the Marquis to himself, as he piloted his charge across the room.

He made the presentation in form.

"Madame la Comtesse, permit that I present to you Mademoiselle de Rochambeau."

Aline bent to the white, wrinkled hand, but was raised and embraced.

"You resemble your mother too closely to be mistaken by any one who had the happiness of her acquaintance," said a gracious voice, and thereon ensued a whole series of introductions. "M. le Marquis de Lancy, who also knew your parents."

"Mme de Créspigny, my granddaughter Mlle Marguerite de Matigny."

A delightful sensation of having come home to a place of safety and shelter came over Aline as she smiled and curtsied, forgetting her poor dress and hard-worked fingers in the pleasure of being restored to the society of her equals.

"Sit down here, beside me," commanded Mme de Matigny. She had been a great beauty as well as a great lady in her day, and she spoke with an imperious air that fitted either part. "Marguerite, give Mademoiselle your stool."