'have you made your mind up to take the oath I
requested of you?'

"'You have said Puritans have but one word. Mine you have heard, and
that is to pursue you--on earth to the tribunal of men, in heaven to the
tribunal of God.'

"'You persist, then?'

"'I swear it before the God who hears me. I will take the whole world as
a witness of your crime, and that until I have found an avenger.'

"'You are a prostitute,' said he, in a voice of thunder, 'and you shall
undergo the punishment of prostitutes! Branded in the eyes of the world
you invoke, try to prove to that world that you are neither guilty nor
mad!'

"Then, addressing the man who accompanied him, 'Executioner,' said he,
'do your duty.'"

"Oh, his name, his name!" cried Felton. "His name, tell it me!"

"Then in spite of my cries, in spite of my resistance--for I began to
comprehend that there was a question of something worse than death--the
executioner seized me, threw me on the floor, fastened me with his
bonds, and suffocated by sobs, almost without sense, invoking God, who
did not listen to me, I uttered all at once a frightful cry of pain and
shame. A burning fire, a red-hot iron, the iron of the executioner, was
imprinted on my shoulder."

Felton uttered a groan.

"Here," said Milady, rising with the majesty of a queen, "here, Felton,
behold the new martyrdom invented for a pure young girl, the victim
of the brutality of a villain. Learn to know the heart of men, and
henceforth make yourself less easily the instrument of their unjust
vengeance."

Milady, with a rapid gesture, opened her robe, tore the cambric that
covered her bosom, and red with feigned anger and simulated shame,
showed the young man the ineffaceable impression which dishonored that
beautiful shoulder.

"But," cried Felton, "that is a FLEUR-DE-LIS which I see there."

"And therein consisted the infamy," replied Milady. "The brand of
England!--it would be necessary to prove what tribunal had imposed it
on me, and I could have made a public appeal to all the tribunals of the
kingdom; but the brand of France!--oh, by that, by THAT I was branded
indeed!"

This was too much for Felton.

Pale, motionless, overwhelmed by this frightful revelation, dazzled by
the superhuman beauty of this woman who unveiled herself before him with
an immodesty which appeared to him sublime, he ended by falling on his
knees before her as the early Christians did before those pure and holy
martyrs w