ence was left behind them. But
Conscience did not at once turn into the house and close the door behind
her. She stood by one of the tall pillars and the boy strained his gaze
to make out more than the vague outline of a shadow-shape. Then slowly
she came down the stairs and out onto the moonlit lawn, walking
meditatively in the direction of Stuart Farquaharson's hiding place. The
boy's heart leaped into a heightened tattoo and he bent eagerly forward
with his lips parted. She moved lightly through the luminance of a world
which the moon had burnished into tints of platinum and silver, and she
was very lovely, he thought, in her child-beauty and slenderness, the
budding and virginal freshness that was only beginning to stir into a
realization of something meant by womanhood. He bent, half kneeling, in
his ambuscade with that dream of love which was all new and wonderful: a
thing of such untarnished romance as only life's morning can give to the
young.

Then into the dream welled a futile wave of resentment and poisoned it
with bitterness. She had played with him and mocked him and cast him
aside and to her he was less than nothing. A few moments ago her voice
had drifted to him in an abandonment of merriment though she was going
away without seeing him. Night after night he had come here, merely for
the sad pleasure of watching her move through the shadows and the
distance.

Now, unconscious of his nearness, the girl came on until she halted
beyond the fence, not more than ten yards away. Cardinal Richelieu
fidgeted on his haunches and silenced, with a difficult self-repression,
the puzzled whine which came into his throat. The tempered spot-light of
the moon was on Conscience's lashes and lips, and the boy stiffened into
a petrified astonishment, for quite abruptly and without warning she
carried both slim hands to her face and her body shook with something
like a paroxysm of sobs.

In a moment she took her hands away and her eyes were shining with a
tearful moisture. A lock of hair fell over her face. She tossed it back,
then she moved a few steps nearer and rested both arms on the top rail
of the fence. In them she buried her cheeks and began to cry softly.
Stuart Farquaharson could almost have touched her but he was quite
invisible. He felt himself an eavesdropper, but he could not escape
without being seen.

The case was different with Cardinal Richelieu. Repressed emotions have
been said to kill strong men. T