Heron, on the other hand,
calls on him four times in every twenty-four hours; he does so a few
moments before the changing of the guard, and stays chatting with Sir
Percy until after the guard is changed, when he inspects the men and
satisfies himself that no traitor has crept in among them. All the men
are personally known to him, you see. These hours are at five in the
morning and again at eleven, and then again at five and eleven in the
evening. My friend Heron, as you see, is zealous and assiduous, and,
strangely enough, Sir Percy does not seem to view his visit with any
displeasure. Now at any other hour of the day, Lady Blakeney, I pray
you command me and I will arrange that citizen Heron grant you a second
interview with the prisoner."

Marguerite had only listened to Chauvelin's lengthy speech with half an
ear; her thoughts still dwelt on the past half-hour with its bitter joy
and its agonising pain; and fighting through her thoughts of Percy there
was the recollection of Armand which so disquieted her. But though she
had only vaguely listened to what Chauvelin was saying, she caught the
drift of it.

Madly she longed to accept his suggestion. The very thought of seeing
Percy on the morrow was solace to her aching heart; it could feed on
hope to-night instead of on its own bitter pain. But even during this
brief moment of hesitancy, and while her whole being cried out for this
joy that her enemy was holding out to her, even then in the gloom ahead
of her she seemed to see a vision of a pale face raised above a crowd
of swaying heads, and of the eyes of the dreamer searching for her own,
whilst the last sublime cry of perfect self-devotion once more echoed in
her ear:

"Remember!"

The promise which she had given him, that would she fulfil. The burden
which he had laid on her shoulders she would try to bear as heroically
as he was bearing his own. Aye, even at the cost of the supreme sorrow
of never resting again in the haven of his arms.

But in spite of sorrow, in spite of anguish so terrible that she could
not imagine Death itself to have a more cruel sting, she wished above
all to safeguard that final, attenuated thread of hope which was wound
round the packet that lay hidden on her breast.

She wanted, above all, not to arouse Chauvelin's suspicions by markedly
refusing to visit the prisoner again--suspicions that might lead to
her being searched once more and the precious packet filched from her.
Th