chastisement, of imprisonment or
death. Would to heaven! Of what consequence to me is imprisonment or
death?"

"It is I who no longer understand you, madame," said Felton.

"Or, rather, who pretend not to understand me, sir!" replied the
prisoner, with a smile of incredulity.

"No, madame, on the honor of a soldier, on the faith of a Christian."

"What, you are ignorant of Lord de Winter's designs upon me?"

"I am."

"Impossible; you are his confidant!"

"I never lie, madame."

"Oh, he conceals them too little for you not to divine them."

"I seek to divine nothing, madame; I wait till I am confided in, and
apart from that which Lord de Winter has said to me before you, he has
confided nothing to me."

"Why, then," cried Milady, with an incredible tone of truthfulness,
"you are not his accomplice; you do not know that he destines me to a
disgrace which all the punishments of the world cannot equal in horror?"

"You are deceived, madame," said Felton, blushing; "Lord de Winter is
not capable of such a crime."

"Good," said Milady to herself; "without thinking what it is, he calls
it a crime!" Then aloud, "The friend of THAT WRETCH is capable of
everything."

"Whom do you call 'that wretch'?" asked Felton.

"Are there, then, in England two men to whom such an epithet can be
applied?"

"You mean George Villiers?" asked Felton, whose looks became excited.

"Whom Pagans and unbelieving Gentiles call Duke of Buckingham," replied
Milady. "I could not have thought that there was an Englishman in all
England who would have required so long an explanation to make him
understand of whom I was speaking."

"The hand of the Lord is stretched over him," said Felton; "he will not
escape the chastisement he deserves."

Felton only expressed, with regard to the duke, the feeling of
execration which all the English had declared toward him whom the
Catholics themselves called the extortioner, the pillager, the
debauchee, and whom the Puritans styled simply Satan.

"Oh, my God, my God!" cried Milady; "when I supplicate thee to pour upon
this man the chastisement which is his due, thou knowest it is not my
own vengeance I pursue, but the deliverance of a whole nation that I
implore!"

"Do you know him, then?" asked Felton.

"At length he interrogates me!" said Milady to herself, at the height
of joy at having obtained so quickly such a great result. "Oh, know
him? Yes, yes! to my misfortune, to my eternal misfortu