ed, while Madeleine, without manifesting
any surprise, rose placidly, laid aside her needlework--a coarse
flannel frock, evidently destined for charity--and bestowed upon her
sister and aunt an affectionate though unexpansive embrace.

She had grown somewhat thinner and more thoughtful-looking since Molly
and she had last met, on that fatal 15th of March, but otherwise was
unchanged in her serene beauty. Molly clutched her wrist with a
burning hand, and, paying not the slightest attention to the other
two, nor condescending to any preamble, began at once, in hurried
words to explain her mission.

"He has asked for you, Madeleine," she cried, her eyes flaming with
unnatural brilliance as they sought her sister's mild gaze. "He has
asked for you, I will take you back with me, to-morrow, not later than
to-morrow. Don't you understand?" shaking her impatiently as she held
her, "he is in prison, condemned to death, he has asked for you, he
wants to see you. On Saturday--on Saturday----" Something clicked in
her throat, and she raised her hand to it with an uneasy gesture, one
that those who surrounded her had grown curiously familiar with of
late.

Madeleine drew away from her at this address, the whole fair calm of
her countenance troubled like a placid pool by the casting of a stone.
Clasping her hands and looking down: "I saw that the unfortunate man
was condemned," she said. "I have prayed for him daily, I trust he
repents. I am truly sorry for him. From my heart I forgive him the
deception he practised upon me. But----" a slight shudder shook her,
"I could not see him again--surely you could not wish it of me."

She spoke with such extreme gentleness that for a minute the woman
before her, in the seething turmoil of her soul, failed to grasp the
meaning of her words.

"You could not go!" she repeated in a bewildered way, "I could not
wish it of you--!" then with a sort of shriek which drew Tanty and
Miss Sophia hurriedly towards her, "Don't you understand--on
Saturday--if it all fails, they will hang him?"

"A-ah!" exclaimed Madeleine with a movement as if to ward off the
sound--the cry, the gesture expressive, not of grief, but of shrinking
repugnance. But after a second, controlling herself:

"And what should that be now, sister, to you or to me?" she said
haughtily.

Lady Landale clapped her hands together.

"And this is the woman he loves!" she cried with a shrill laugh. And
she staggered, and sank back