he subject of Armand, he would not add yet
another burden to this devoted woman's heavy load of misery.

"It was Fate, Lady Blakeney," he said after a while. "Fate! a damnable
fate which did it all. Great God! to think of Blakeney in the hands
of those brutes seems so horrible that at times I feel as if the whole
thing were a nightmare, and that the next moment we shall both wake
hearing his merry voice echoing through this room."

He tried to cheer her with words of hope that he knew were but chimeras.
A heavy weight of despondency lay on his heart. The letter from his
chief was hidden against his breast; he would study it anon in the
privacy of his own apartment so as to commit every word to memory that
related to the measures for the ultimate safety of the child-King. After
that it would have to be destroyed, lest it fell into inimical hands.

Soon he bade Marguerite good-night. She was tired out, body and soul,
and he--her faithful friend--vaguely wondered how long she would be able
to withstand the strain of so much sorrow, such unspeakable misery.

When at last she was alone Marguerite made brave efforts to compose
her nerves so as to obtain a certain modicum of sleep this night. But,
strive how she might, sleep would not come. How could it, when before
her wearied brain there rose constantly that awful vision of Percy in
the long, narrow cell, with weary head bent over his arm, and those
friends shouting persistently in his ear:

"Wake up, citizen! Tell us, where is Capet?"

The fear obsessed her that his mind might give way; for the mental agony
of such intense weariness must be well-nigh impossible to bear. In the
dark, as she sat hour after hour at the open window, looking out in the
direction where through the veil of snow the grey walls of the Chatelet
prison towered silent and grim, she seemed to see his pale, drawn face
with almost appalling reality; she could see every line of it, and could
study it with the intensity born of a terrible fear.

How long would the ghostly glimmer of merriment still linger in the
eyes? When would the hoarse, mirthless laugh rise to the lips, that
awful laugh that proclaims madness? Oh! she could have screamed now with
the awfulness of this haunting terror. Ghouls seemed to be mocking
her out of the darkness, every flake of snow that fell silently on the
window-sill became a grinning face that taunted and derided; every cry
in the silence of the night, every footstep on