ssession of her. She
rushed to the window, and Blassemare, with a gentle force, drew her
back.

It was at that moment she saw Gabriel, and shrieked to him for help.

The coach was again thundering at a gallop along the highway. Lucille
sank back in the corner, and wept with mingled anger and despair.
Blassemare was not a ruffian, so he said, "Madame, calm yourself, I wish
to treat you with respect; your suspicions wound me as much as your
ingratitude. I hope, however, that both will vanish on reflection. In
the meantime, I cannot consent to so insane a measure as your leaving
the carriage. Your return to the Chateau des Anges is not to be thought
of; you dare not go back; and pardon me, madame, I will not permit you
to leave this carriage except for a place of safety and temporary
concealment."

Lucille's haughty and fiery temper could hardly brook this hoity-toity
assumption of authority. There was, however, an obvious vein of reason
in what he said; and she saw, besides, the futility of contending with
one whose will was probably as strong as her own, and backed with power
to make it effectual. She therefore maintained a moody silence, and
Blassemarre, deeming it best to suffer her ill-humor to expend itself
harmlessly, awaited better moments in congenial taciturnity.

Having got a relay of fresh horses upon the way, they continued their
journey at the same furious pace, and at last they entered Paris.
Passing through streets which hemmed her in, or opened in long vistas
like the fantastic scenery of a dream, hurrying onward, she knew not
whither, under swinging lamps, amidst silence and desertion, the
carriage at last drove under a narrow archway into a sort of fore-court,
over which a dark mass of building was looming, and through a second
gateway in this, into an inclosed quadrangle, surrounded by the same
black pile of buildings.

Here the carriage stopped, and one of the attendants, dismounting, rang
a hall bell, whose deep sudden peal through empty vastness gave a
character of profound desolation to the silence in which it was
swallowed. More than once the summons was repeated, and at last a faint
light gleamed upon the windows, and the door was timorously unbarred and
opened. A hard-featured hag, in a faded suit of an obsolete fashion--the
_genius loci_--received the party. She scrutinized Lucille with a
protracted stare of audacious inquisitiveness, and when she had quite
satisfied her curiosity, she led