"you have not told us
yet what you have done with Capet!"

Marguerite uttered a cry of horror. Instinctively her arms were
interposed between the unconscious man and these inhuman creatures, with
a beautiful gesture of protecting motherhood.

"He has fainted," she said, her voice quivering with indignation. "My
God! are you devils that you have not one spark of manhood in you?"

The men shrugged their shoulders, and both laughed brutally. They had
seen worse sights than these, since they served a Republic that ruled
by bloodshed and by terror. They were own brothers in callousness and
cruelty to those men who on this self-same spot a few months ago had
watched the daily agony of a martyred Queen, or to those who had rushed
into the Abbaye prison on that awful day in September, and at a word
from their infamous leaders had put eighty defenceless prisoners--men,
women, and children--to the sword.

"Tell him to say what he has done with Capet," said one of the soldiers
now, and this rough command was accompanied with a coarse jest that sent
the blood flaring up into Marguerite's pale cheeks.

The brutal laugh, the coarse words which accompanied it, the insult
flung at Marguerite, had penetrated to Blakeney's slowly returning
consciousness. With sudden strength, that appeared almost supernatural,
he jumped to his feet, and before any of the others could interfere he
had with clenched fist struck the soldier a full blow on the mouth.

The man staggered back with a curse, the other shouted for help; in a
moment the narrow place swarmed with soldiers; Marguerite was roughly
torn away from the prisoner's side, and thrust into the far corner of
the cell, from where she only saw a confused mass of blue coats and
white belts, and--towering for one brief moment above what seemed to
her fevered fancy like a veritable sea of heads--the pale face of her
husband, with wide dilated eyes searching the gloom for hers.

"Remember!" he shouted, and his voice for that brief moment rang out
clear and sharp above the din.

Then he disappeared behind the wall of glistening bayonets, of blue
coats and uplifted arms; mercifully for her she remembered nothing more
very clearly. She felt herself being dragged out of the cell, the iron
bar being thrust down behind her with a loud clang. Then in a vague,
dreamy state of semi-unconsciousness she saw the heavy bolts being drawn
back from the outer door, heard the grating of the key in the monum