without exchanging a word of explanation, until
the tramp of the strange footsteps had died away.

"Louis," continued Rose, dropping her voice to a whisper, after nothing
more was audible, "when may I trust our secret to my husband?"

"Not yet!" rejoined Trudaine, earnestly. "Not a word, not a hint of it,
till I give you leave. Remember, Rose, you promised silence from the
first. Everything depends on your holding that promise sacred till I
release you from it."

"I will hold it sacred; I will indeed, at all hazards, under all
provocations," she answered.

"That is quite enough to reassure me--and now, love, let us change the
subject. Even these walls may have ears, and the closed door yonder
may be no protection." He looked toward it uneasily while he spoke.
"By-the-by, I have come round to your way of thinking, Rose, about that
new servant of mine--there is something false in his face. I wish I had
been as quick to detect it as you were."

Rose glanced at him affrightedly. "Has he done anything suspicious? Have
you caught him watching you? Tell me the worst, Louis."

"Hush! hush! my dear, not so loud. Don't alarm yourself; he has done
nothing suspicious."

"Turn him off--pray, pray turn him off, before it is too late!"

"And be denounced by him, in revenge, the first night he goes to his
Section. You forget that servants and masters are equal now. I am not
supposed to keep a servant at all. I have a citizen living with me
who lays me under domestic obligations, for which I make a pecuniary
acknowledgment. No! no! if I do anything, I must try if I can't entrap
him into giving me warning. But we have got to another unpleasant
subject already--suppose I change the topic again? You will find a
little book on that table there, in the corner--tell me what you think
of it."

The book was a copy of Corneille's "Cid," prettily bound in blue
morocco. Rose was enthusiastic in her praises. "I found it in a
bookseller's shop, yesterday," said her brother, "and bought it as a
present for you. Corneille is not an author to compromise any one, even
in these times. Don't you remember saying the other day that you
felt ashamed of knowing but little of our greatest dramatist?" Rose
remembered well, and smiled almost as happily as in the old times over
her present. "There are some good engravings at the beginning of each
act," continued Trudaine, directing her attention rather earnestly to
the illustrations, and then suddenly