ibery was not to be thought
of. Dr. Legrand seemed to thoroughly understand this twisted and
diseased conscience, and had a remedy to offer. What persuasion he used,
what proportion of his exorbitant fees found its way into other pockets,
cannot be said, it was a secret he locked up in his own soul, but it
soon became known that aristocrats, fortunate enough to be prisoners in
this house in the Rue Charonne, were safe so long as the fees were paid.

The agents of the Public Prosecutor never came there for food for the
guillotine. If the fees were not paid, it invariably meant that some ill
turn of fortune, which Legrand was quite unable to explain, necessitated
the speedy removal of the delinquent to the Abbaye, to Sainte Pelagie,
or one of the other prisons where their days were almost certain to be
few.

A round-faced man, with generosity beaming in his eyes, was Dr. Legrand.
His prisoners, or guests as he preferred to call them, were free to
roam the house or the grounds at their will; if the table he kept was
not liberal, a certain etiquette was indulged in which did something to
cover the parsimony, and the insane inmates who remained in the house
were pushed out of the way into odd corners as much as possible.

Into the doctor's study one morning there had come a man and a woman.

"I have come as arranged," said the man. "This is the lady."

Legrand bowed low, and appeared to overflow with benevolence.

"I am happy to welcome such a guest," he said. "There are certain
formalities, and then you are as safe, mademoiselle, as you could be at
Beauvais."

So it was that Mademoiselle St. Clair came to be a guest at the house in
the Rue Charonne, brought there for safety by Lucien Bruslart. She had
been there a week when, not far away, Richard Barrington had been
obliged to run for his life, and with the help of a man, whose identity
the dark entry concealed, had jumped into safety. Of this she knew
nothing; she was as ignorant of what was passing in the city as though
hundreds of miles separated her from it. Lucien had found her a safe
retreat, and the time was not so heavy on her hands as she had expected.
Although she chanced upon no intimate friends in Dr. Legrand's house,
she met several acquaintances, men and women she had known something of
before the flight to Beauvais. They had much to talk of in the day, and
in the evenings they sang and danced. If care was heavy upon some of
them, smiling faces were mad