ed him from enjoying his hospitality.

He was a man of fierce independence and passionate temperament,
possessing withal a dogged tenacity that she always ascribed to the fact
that he was born of an English mother. But she had never before that day
credited him with the desire to exercise a personal influence in her
life. She had avoided him by instinct, and till that day he had always
seemed to acquiesce.

His offer of marriage had been utterly unexpected. Regarding him as she
did, it seemed to her little short of an insult. She hardly knew what
motive to ascribe to him for it; but circumstances seemed to point to
one, ambition. No doubt he thought that she might prove of use to him
when he stepped into the Governor's place.

Well, he had his answer--a very emphatic one. He could scarcely fail to
take her at her word. She smiled faintly to herself even while she
shivered, as she recalled the scarcely suppressed fury with which he had
received his dismissal. She was glad that she had managed to pierce
through that immaculate armour of self-complacence just once. She had
not been woman otherwise.

III

An intense stillness brooded over the city. The night was starless, the
sea black as ink. Stephanie stood alone in the darkness of her balcony,
and listened to the silence.

Seven days had elapsed since her interview with Pierre Dumaresq--seven
days of horrible, nerve-racking suspense, of anguished foreboding, of
ever-creeping, leaden-footed despair. And now at last, though the
suspense still held her, she knew that the end had come. Only that
evening, as her carriage had been turning in at the palace gates, a bomb
had been flung under the wheels. By some miracle it had not exploded.
She had passed on unharmed.

But the ghastly incident was to her as the sounding of her own
death-knell. Standing there with her face to the sea, she was telling
herself that she would never see the daylight again. The very soldiers
that guarded them were revolutionists at heart. They were only waiting,
so she believed, for a strong man's word of command to throw open the
palace doors to frenzied murderers.

No sound came up to her from the motionless sea, no faintest echo of
waves upon the shore. The stillness hung like a weight upon the senses.
There was something sinister about it, something vaguely terrible. Yet,
as she stood there waiting, she was not afraid. Something deeper than
fear was in her heart. Pulsing through a