you will be away from this place; your life, madame, will
then no longer be under my care, and," added he, with a sigh, "then you
can do what you will with it."

"So," cried Milady, as if she could not resist giving utterance to a
holy indignation, "you, a pious man, you who are called a just man, you
ask but one thing--and that is that you may not be inculpated, annoyed,
by my death!"

"It is my duty to watch over your life, madame, and I will watch."

"But do you understand the mission you are fulfilling? Cruel enough, if
I am guilty; but what name can you give it, what name will the Lord give
it, if I am innocent?"

"I am a soldier, madame, and fulfill the orders I have received."

"Do you believe, then, that at the day of the Last Judgment God will
separate blind executioners from iniquitous judges? You are not willing
that I should kill my body, and you make yourself the agent of him who
would kill my soul."

"But I repeat it again to you," replied Felton, in great emotion, "no
danger threatens you; I will answer for Lord de Winter as for myself."

"Dunce," cried Milady, "dunce! who dares to answer for another man, when
the wisest, when those most after God's own heart, hesitate to answer
for themselves, and who ranges himself on the side of the strongest and
the most fortunate, to crush the weakest and the most unfortunate."

"Impossible, madame, impossible," murmured Felton, who felt to the
bottom of his heart the justness of this argument. "A prisoner, you will
not recover your liberty through me; living, you will not lose your life
through me."

"Yes," cried Milady, "but I shall lose that which is much dearer to me
than life, I shall lose my honor, Felton; and it is you, you whom I make
responsible, before God and before men, for my shame and my infamy."

This time Felton, immovable as he was, or appeared to be, could not
resist the secret influence which had already taken possession of him.
To see this woman, so beautiful, fair as the brightest vision, to see
her by turns overcome with grief and threatening; to resist at once the
ascendancy of grief and beauty--it was too much for a visionary; it was
too much for a brain weakened by the ardent dreams of an ecstatic faith;
it was too much for a heart furrowed by the love of heaven that burns,
by the hatred of men that devours.

Milady saw the trouble. She felt by intuition the flame of the opposing
passions which burned with the blood in the veins o