rk and crooked ways, where low intrigue and plot and treachery are
better weapons than your own stout heart and your own bright sword?"

"Hear me, I pray you," said I, bursting into impatience,--"hear me but
one word, and know that you accuse me wrongfully. I have no part in, nor
have I knowledge of, any treason."

"Oh, speak not thus to me! There are those who may call their acts by
high-sounding titles, and say, 'We are but restoring our own sovereigns
to the land they owned.' But you are free to think and feel; no prestige
of long years blinds your reason or obstructs your sense of right."

"Once more I swear, that though I can but guess at where your suspicions
point, my faith is now as true, my loyalty as firm, as when I pledged
myself at your dear brother's side to be a soldier."

"Then why have you mixed yourself with their intrigues? Why are you
already suspected? Why has Madame Bonaparte received orders to omit your
name in all the invitations to the chateau?"

"Alas! I know not. I learn now, for the first time that suspicion ever
attached to me."

"It is said, too,--for already such things are spoken of,--that you know
that dreadful man whose very presence is contamination. Oh! does it not
seem like fate that his dark path should traverse every portion of my
destiny?"

The sobs that burst from her at these words seemed to rend her very
bosom. "They say," continued she, while her voice trembled with strong
emotion,--"they say he has been here."

"I know not of whom you speak," said I, as a cold chill ran through my
blood.

"Mehee de la Touche," replied she, with an effort.

"I never heard of him till now; the very name is unknown to me."

"Thank God for this!" muttered she between her teeth. "I thought,
perhaps, that De Beauvais had made you known to each other."

"No; De Beauvais never introduced me, save to some friends of his one
evening at a supper, several months back; and only one of them have I
ever seen since,--an Abbe, d'Ervan. And, indeed, if I am guilty of any
breach of duty, I did not think the reproach was to come from you."

The bitterness of these last words was wrung from me in a moment of
wounded pride.

"How! what mean you?" said she, impetuously. "No one has dared to call
my fidelity into question, nor speak of me as false to those who cherish
and protect me."

"You mistake my meaning," said I, sadly and slowly. Then hesitating how
far I should dare allude to De Beauvais's a