not a particle
of colour in cheeks or lips, the skin was grey in hue, the eyes looked
like deep caverns, wherein the glow of fever was all that was left of
life.

Chauvelin looked on in silence, vaguely stirred by something that
he could not define, something that right through his triumphant
satisfaction, his hatred and final certainty of revenge, had roused in
him a sense almost of admiration.

He gazed on the noiseless figure of the man who had endured so much for
an ideal, and as he gazed it seemed to him as if the spirit no longer
dwelt in the body, but hovered round in the dank, stuffy air of the
narrow cell above the head of the lonely prisoner, crowning it with
glory that was no longer of this earth.

Of this the looker-on was conscious despite himself, of that and of the
fact that stare as he might, and with perception rendered doubly keen
by hate, he could not, in spite of all, find the least trace of mental
weakness in that far-seeing gaze which seemed to pierce the prison
walls, nor could he see that bodily weakness had tended to subdue the
ruling passions.

Sir Percy Blakeney--a prisoner since seventeen days in close, solitary
confinement, half-starved, deprived of rest, and of that mental and
physical activity which had been the very essence of life to him
hitherto--might be outwardly but a shadow of his former brilliant self,
but nevertheless he was still that same elegant English gentleman, that
prince of dandies whom Chauvelin had first met eighteen months ago at
the most courtly Court in Europe. His clothes, despite constant wear
and the want of attention from a scrupulous valet, still betrayed the
perfection of London tailoring; he had put them on with meticulous care,
they were free from the slightest particle of dust, and the filmy folds
of priceless Mechlin still half-veiled the delicate whiteness of his
shapely hands.

And in the pale, haggard face, in the whole pose of body and of arm,
there was still the expression of that indomitable strength of will,
that reckless daring, that almost insolent challenge to Fate; it was
there untamed, uncrushed. Chauvelin himself could not deny to himself
its presence or its force. He felt that behind that smooth brow, which
looked waxlike now, the mind was still alert, scheming, plotting,
striving for freedom, for conquest and for power, and rendered even
doubly keen and virile by the ardour of supreme self-sacrifice.

Chauvelin now made a slight movem