t intervals
as the work of construction progressed. It was no easy matter, for
he was of low stature, and his hands were unsteady from apparently
uncontrollable nervousness.

Marguerite, leaning slightly forward, her chin resting in her hand, was
too puzzled and anxious to grasp the humour of this comical situation.
She certainly did not understand. This old man had in some sort of way,
and for a hitherto unexplained reason, been set as a guard over her; it
was not an unusual device on the part of the inhuman wretches who now
ruled France, to add to the miseries and terrors of captivity, where a
woman of refinement was concerned, the galling outrage of never leaving
her alone for a moment.

That peculiar form of mental torture, surely the invention of brains
rendered mad by their own ferocious cruelty, was even now being
inflicted on the hapless, dethroned Queen of France. Marguerite, in
far-off England, had shuddered when she heard of it, and in her heart
had prayed, as indeed every pure-minded woman did then, that proud,
unfortunate Marie Antoinette might soon find release from such torments
in death.

There was evidently some similar intention with regard to Marguerite
herself in the minds of those who now held her prisoner. But this old
man seemed so feeble and so helpless, his very delicacy of thought as
he built up a screen to divide the squalid room in two, proved him to be
singularly inefficient for the task of a watchful jailer.

When the four chairs appeared fairly steady, and in comparatively little
danger of toppling, he dragged the paillasse forward and propped it
up against the chairs. Finally he drew the table along, which held the
cracked ewer and basin, and placed it against this improvised partition:
then he surveyed the whole construction with evident gratification and
delight.

"There now!" he said, turning a face beaming with satisfaction to
Marguerite, "I can continue my prayers on the other side of the
fortress. Oh! it is quite safe..." he added, as with a fearsome hand he
touched his engineering feat with gingerly pride, "and you will be quite
private.... Try and forget that the old abbe is in the room.... He does
not count... really he does not count... he has ceased to be of any
moment these many months now that Saint Joseph is closed and he may no
longer say Mass."

He was obviously prattling on in order to hide his nervous bashfulness.
He ensconced himself behind his own finely constr