"

"I will be quick."

"It is I whom he will suspect," said Gabriel, in alarm, as that thought
struck him. "No, for my sake do not take the letter till I am gone. Do
not fear in the mean time; he will do nothing against you while I am
here."

"I will replace the letter till then," said Lucretia, meekly. "You have
a right to my first thoughts." So she went back, and Gabriel (suspicious
perhaps) crept after her.

As she replaced the document, he pointed to the manuscript which had
tempted her. "I have seen that before; how I longed for it! If anything
ever happens to him, I claim that as my legacy."

Their hands met as he said this, and grasped each other convulsively;
Lucretia relocked the secretary, and when she gained the next room,
she tottered to a chair. Her strong nerves gave way for the moment; she
uttered no cry, but by the whiteness of her face, Gabriel saw that she
was senseless,--senseless for a minute or so; scarcely more. But the
return to consciousness with a clenched hand, and a brow of defiance,
and a stare of mingled desperation and dismay, seemed rather the awaking
from some frightful dream of violence and struggle than the slow,
languid recovery from the faintness of a swoon. Yes, henceforth, to
sleep was to couch by a serpent,--to breathe was to listen for the
avalanche! Thou who didst trifle so wantonly with Treason, now gravely
front the grim comrade thou hast won; thou scheming desecrator of the
Household Gods, now learn, to the last page of dark knowledge, what the
hearth is without them!

Gabriel was strangely moved as he beheld that proud and solitary
despair. An instinct of nature had hitherto checked him from actively
aiding Lucretia in that struggle with his father which could but end
in the destruction of one or the other. He had contented himself with
forewarnings, with hints, with indirect suggestions; but now all his
sympathy was so strongly roused on her behalf that the last faint
scruple of filial conscience vanished into the abyss of blood over which
stood that lonely Titaness. He drew near, and clasping her hand, said,
in a quick and broken voice,--

"Listen! You know where to find proof of my fa--that is, of Dalibard's
treason to the conspirators, you know the name of the man he dreads as
an avenger, and you know that he waits but the proof to strike; but
you do not know where to find that man, if his revenge is wanting for
yourself. The police have not hunted him out: how c