d them which none could cast aside: a barrier erected in the past and
based on the sure foundations of history.

"She is an old woman," said Monsieur de Gemosac to any who spoke to him
on this subject. "She is seventy-two, and fifty-eight of those years
have been marked by greater misfortunes than ever fell to the lot of a
woman. When she came out of prison she had no tears left, my friends.
We cannot expect her to turn back willingly to the past now. But we know
that in her heart she has never been sure that her brother died in the
Temple. You know how many disappointments she has had. We must not awake
her sleeping sorrow until all is ready. I shall make the journey to
Frohsdorf--that I promise you. But to-night we have another task before
us."

"Yes--yes," answered his listeners. "You are to open the locket. Where
is it?--show it to us."

And the locket which Captain Clubbe's wife had given to Dormer Colville
was handed from one to another. It was not of great value, but it was
of gold with stones, long since discoloured, set in silver around it. It
was crushed and misshapen.

"It has never been opened for twenty years," they told each other. "It
has been mislaid in an obscure village in England for nearly half a
century."

"The Vicomte de Castel Aunet--who is so clever a mechanician--has
promised to bring his tools," said Monsieur de Gemosac. "He will open it
for us--even if he find it necessary to break the locket."

So the thing went round the room until it came to Loo Barebone.

"I have seen it before," he said. "I think I remember seeing it long
ago--when I was a little child."

And he handed it to the old Vicomte de Castel Aunet, whose shaking
fingers closed round it in a breathless silence. He carried it to the
table, and some one brought candles. The Vicomte was very old. He had
learnt clock-making, they said, in prison during the Terror.

"Il n'y a moyen," he whispered to himself. "I must break it."

With one effort he prised up the cover, but the hinge snapped, and the
lid rolled across the table into Barebone's hand.

"Ah!" he cried, in that breathless silence, "now I remember it. I
remember the red silk lining of the cover, and in the other side there
is the portrait of a lady with--"

The Vicomte paused, with his palm covering the other half of the locket
and looked across at Loo. And the eyes of all Royalist France were fixed
on the same face.

"Silence!" whispered Dormer Colville in Eng