will yield to my letter and to Ffoulkes' earnest
appeal--they will allow one of our League to convey the child safely out
of France, and I'll wait here until I know that he is safe. If I tried
to get away now, and succeeded--why, Heaven help us! the hue and cry
might turn against the child, and he might be captured before I could
get to him. Dear heart! dear, dear heart! try to understand. The safety
of that child is bound with mine honour, but I swear to you, my sweet
love, that the day on which I feel that that safety is assured I will
save mine own skin--what there is left of it--if I can!"

"Percy!" she cried with a sudden outburst of passionate revolt, "you
speak as if the safety of that child were of more moment than your own.
Ten days!--but, God in Heaven! have you thought how I shall live these
ten days, whilst slowly, inch by inch, you give your dear, your precious
life for a forlorn cause?

"I am very tough, m'dear," he said lightly; "'tis not a question of
life. I shall only be spending a few more very uncomfortable days in
this d--d hole; but what of that?"

Her eyes spoke the reply; her eyes veiled with tears, that wandered
with heart-breaking anxiety from the hollow circles round his own to
the lines of weariness about the firm lips and jaw. He laughed at her
solicitude.

"I can last out longer than these brutes have any idea of," he said
gaily.

"You cheat yourself, Percy," she rejoined with quiet earnestness. "Every
day that you spend immured between these walls, with that ceaseless
nerve-racking torment of sleeplessness which these devils have devised
for the breaking of your will--every day thus spent diminishes
your power of ultimately saving yourself. You see, I speak
calmly--dispassionately--I do not even urge my claims upon your life.
But what you must weigh in the balance is the claim of all those for
whom in the past you have already staked your life, whose lives you have
purchased by risking your own. What, in comparison with your noble life,
is that of the puny descendant of a line of decadent kings? Why should
it be sacrificed--ruthlessly, hopelessly sacrificed that a boy might
live who is as nothing to the world, to his country--even to his own
people?"

She had tried to speak calmly, never raising her voice beyond a whisper.
Her hands still clutched that paper, which seemed to sear her fingers,
the paper which she felt held writ upon its smooth surface the
death-sentence of the man s