guards were summoned, the young man gave up
his sword, and under their escort he was presently on his way to Caen
prison.

Then, summoning a detail of military police, the Count moved to carry
out the other part of his plan.

* * * * *

"You are Mademoiselle Henriette Girard?" inquired the Countess kindly
on entering the girl's lodgings.

Henriette greeted the distinguished and aristocratic lady with due
respect. Making her comfortable in a guest chair, she resumed her
sewing and listened.

"I am the aunt of the Chevalier Maurice de Vaudrey." The girl,
startled, looked up from her work. "Marriage between you and the
Chevalier is impossible."

"I love him, Madame," replied Henriette, simply.

"Then it is your duty to give him up, since it is the will of the King
that he marry Princesse de Acquitaine--"

Henriette paled. For an instant the blue eyes looked near-tigerish,
with green and yellow lights. Yet she must save Maurice from the
King's wrath.

"If you will make this sacrifice," continued the Countess, "I shall
not prove ungrateful with any reward that is in my power."

"Oh, yes, there is!" replied Henriette earnestly. She showed the
Countess her sampler, on which she was working the word--

LOUISE

"Louise--that name is very dear to me," replied the Lady softly. She
visioned a scene of long ago when an infant Louise had been snatched
from her young arms--the arms of a mother deprived of her offspring.

"She is my sister," resumed Henriette--"lost, wandering and alone, on
the streets of Paris. Oh, help me find her, and I--I will do anything
you say!" The poor creature sobbed in her double misery.

She pointed to her own eyes in gesture to portray Louise's misfortune:
"Blind--so helpless--it was just like taking care of a baby." She told
the story of her abduction and the loss of her sister, then of
Chevalier de Vaudrey's vain efforts and hers to trace her.

The Countess de Linieres leaned forward in intense sympathy conjoined
with a certain weird premonition.

"She isn't really my sister," went on Henriette, "but I owe her the
love of a mother and sister combined. She saved us from want and
death. My father found her on the steps of Notre Dame--"

A low cry escaped the Countess.

"--where he was about to put me as a foundling, there not being a
morsel of food in our wretched home. This other baby was half buried
under t