hrobbing with the sustained effort to
speak.

"If those friends had only thought of denying me food instead of sleep,"
he murmured involuntarily, "I could have held out until--"

Then with characteristic swiftness his mood changed in a moment. His
arms closed round Marguerite once more with a passion of self-reproach.

"Heaven forgive me for a selfish brute," he said, whilst the ghost of
a smile once more lit up the whole of his face. "Dear soul, I must
have forgotten your sweet presence, thus brooding over my own troubles,
whilst your loving heart has a graver burden--God help me!--than it can
possibly bear. Listen, my beloved, for I don't know how many minutes
longer they intend to give us, and I have not yet spoken to you about
Armand--"

"Armand!" she cried.

A twinge of remorse had gripped her. For fully ten minutes now she had
relegated all thoughts of her brother to a distant cell of her memory.

"We have no news of Armand," she said. "Sir Andrew has searched all the
prison registers. Oh! were not my heart atrophied by all that it has
endured this past sennight it would feel a final throb of agonising pain
at every thought of Armand."

A curious look, which even her loving eyes failed to interpret, passed
like a shadow over her husband's face. But the shadow lifted in a
moment, and it was with a reassuring smile that he said to her:

"Dear heart! Armand is comparatively safe for the moment. Tell
Ffoulkes not to search the prison registers for him, rather to seek out
Mademoiselle Lange. She will know where to find Armand."

"Jeanne Lange!" she exclaimed with a world of bitterness in the tone of
her voice, "the girl whom Armand loved, it seems, with a passion greater
than his loyalty. Oh! Sir Andrew tried to disguise my brother's
folly, but I guessed what he did not choose to tell me. It was his
disobedience, his want of trust, that brought this unspeakable misery on
us all."

"Do not blame him overmuch, dear heart. Armand was in love, and love
excuses every sin committed in its name. Jeanne Lange was arrested and
Armand lost his reason temporarily. The very day on which I rescued the
Dauphin from the Temple I had the good fortune to drag the little lady
out of prison. I had given my promise to Armand that she should be safe,
and I kept my word. But this Armand did not know--or else--"

He checked himself abruptly, and once more that strange, enigmatical
look crept into his eyes.

"I took Jeanne Lang