re pouring out into the gardens. The shutters of the
lower rooms, in the apartments of the Dauphin and of Mesdames, were
being closed one by one, by the _gardiens_ within. Eugenie peered
through the window beside her. She saw before her a long vista of
darkened and solitary rooms, dim portraits of the marshals of France
just visible on their walls. Suddenly--under a gleam of light from a
shutter not yet fastened--there shone out amid the shadows a bust
of Louis Seize! The Bourbon face, with its receding brow, its heavy,
good-natured lips, its smiling incapacity, held--dominated--the
palace.

Eugenie watched, holding her breath. Slowly the light died; the marble
withdrew into the dark; and Louis Seize was once more with the ghosts.

Eugenie's fancy pursued him. She thought of the night of the 20th
of January, 1793, when Madame Royale, in the darkness of the Temple,
heard her mother turning miserably on her bed, sleepless with grief
and cold, waiting for that last rendezvous of seven o'clock which the
King had promised her--waiting--waiting--till the great bell of Notre
Dame told her that Louis had passed to another meeting, more urgent,
more peremptory still.

'Oh, poor soul!--poor soul!' she said, aloud, pressing her hands on
her eyes.

'What on earth do you mean!' said Mrs. Welby's voice beside
her--startled--stiff--a little suspicious.

Eugenie looked up and blushed.

'I beg your pardon!--I was thinking of Marie Antoinette.'

'I'm so tired of Marie Antoinette!' said the invalid, raising a
petulant hand, and letting it fall again, inert. 'All the silly
memorials of her they sell here!--and the sentimental talk about her!
Arthur, of course, now--with his picture--thinks of nothing else.'

'Naturally!'

'I don't know. People are bored with Marie Antoinette. I wish he'd
taken another subject. And as to her beauty--how could she have been
beautiful, with those staring eyes, and that lower lip! I say so to
Arthur--and he raves--and quotes Horace Walpole--and all sorts of
people. But one can see for one's self. People are much prettier now
than they ever were then! We should think nothing of their beauties.'

And the delicate lips of this once lovely child, this flower withered
before its time, made a cold gesture of contempt.

In Eugenie's eyes, as they rested upon her companion, there was a
flash--was it of horror?

Was she jealous even of the dead women whom Arthur painted?--no less
than of his living frie