angement,
turning to cool enmity; small insults, which ripened evilly to great
injuries--these were the pitiless signs which showed her that she
had risked all and lost all while still a young woman--these were the
unmerited afflictions which found her helpless, and would have left her
helpless, but for the ever-present comfort and support of her brother's
self-denying love. From the first, Trudaine had devoted himself to meet
such trials as now assailed him; and like a man he met them, in defiance
alike of persecution from the mother and of insult from the son.

The hard task was only lightened when, as time advanced, public trouble
began to mingle itself with private grief. Then absorbing political
necessities came as a relief to domestic misery. Then it grew to be the
one purpose and pursuit of Danville's life cunningly to shape his course
so that he might move safely onward with the advancing revolutionary
tide--he cared not whither, as long as he kept his possessions safe and
his life out of danger. His mother, inflexibly true to her Old-World
convictions through all peril, might entreat and upbraid, might talk of
honor, and courage, and sincerity--he heeded her not, or heeded only to
laugh. As he had taken the false way with his wife, so he was now bent
on taking it with the world.

The years passed on; destroying changes swept hurricane-like over the
old governing system of France; and still Danville shifted successfully
with the shifting times. The first days of the Terror approached; in
public and in private--in high places and in low--each man now suspected
his brother. Crafty as Danville was, even he fell under suspicion at
last, at headquarters in Paris, principally on his mother's account.
This was his first political failure; and, in a moment of thoughtless
rage and disappointment, he wreaked the irritation caused by it on
Lomaque. Suspected himself, he in turn suspected the land-steward. His
mother fomented the suspicion--Lomaque was dismissed.

In the old times the victim would have been ruined, in the new times he
was simply rendered eligible for a political vocation in life. Lomaque
was poor, quick-witted, secret, not scrupulous. He was a good patriot;
he had good patriot friends, plenty of ambition, a subtle, cat-like
courage, nothing to dread--and he went to Paris. There were plenty of
small chances there for men of his caliber. He waited for one of them.
It came; he made the most of it; attracted