s quaint, tuneful lullaby.

Now, as they kneeled over the cradle, one on each side, and rocked it,
and sang that ancient chant, Josephine, who was opposite the screen,
happening to raise her eyes, saw a strange thing.

There was the face of a man set close against the side of the screen,
and peeping and peering out of the gloom. The light of her candle fell
full on this face; it glared at her, set pale, wonder-struck, and vivid
in the surrounding gloom.

Horror! It was her husband's face.

At first she was quite stupefied, and looked at it with soul and senses
benumbed. Then she trembled, and put her hand to her eyes; for she
thought it a phantom or a delusion of the mind. No: there it glared
still. Then she trembled violently, and held out her left hand, the
fingers working convulsively, to Rose, who was still singing.

But, at the same moment, the mouth of this face suddenly opened in a
long-drawn breath. At this, Josephine uttered a violent shriek, and
sprang to her feet, with her right hand quivering and pointing at that
pale face set in the dark.

Rose started up, and, wheeling her head round, saw Raynal's gloomy
face looking over her shoulder. She fell screaming upon her knees, and,
almost out of her senses, began to pray wildly and piteously for mercy.

Josephine uttered one more cry, but this was the faint cry of nature,
sinking under the shock of terror. She swooned dead away, and fell
senseless on the floor ere Raynal could debarrass himself of the screen,
and get to her.

This, then, was the scene that met Edouard's eyes. His affianced bride
on her knees, white as a ghost, trembling, and screaming, rather than
crying, for mercy. And Raynal standing over his wife, showing by the
working of his iron features that he doubted whether she was worthy he
should raise her.

One would have thought nothing could add to the terror of this scene.
Yet it was added to. The baroness rang her bell violently in the room
below. She had heard Josephine's scream and fall.

At the ringing of this shrill bell Rose shuddered like a maniac, and
grovelled on her knees to Raynal, and seized his very knees and implored
him to show some pity.

"O sir! kill us! we are culpable"--

Dring! dring! dring! dring! dring! pealed the baroness's bell again.

"But do not tell our mother. Oh, if you are a man! do not! do not! Show
us some pity. We are but women. Mercy! mercy! mercy!"

"Speak out then," groaned Raynal. "What does th