the help
of M. Perigord and his friends Marguerite might be kept out of harm's
way. In the meanwhile Clotilde would have an opportunity of appealing
to her uncle, who, she fully believed, would never countenance any
positive ill-treatment of one who might be said to have been bequeathed
to the hospitality of the family. She might have doubted even her own
ability to detach the marquis from the enemy's ranks but for one little
circumstance, which was this. On hearing Isidore's account of the
scene at the Chateau de Beaujardin, and the incident of the charred
scrap of paper, Clotilde had gone and examined the stove in the
apartment occupied by Isidore during his recent visit. Not a trace
could she find of anything having been burnt there, and a minute
questioning of the domestics had proved beyond a doubt that any story
of the burning of the letter in that room was a fabrication. She knew
well her uncle's intense abhorrence of anything like treachery or
deceit. It was indeed this trait in his disposition that had led to
his severity towards Isidore, and it was on this that she now relied
for the success of her efforts to enlist the sympathy of the old
marquis in favour of her cousin and her friend.

Absorbed in these thoughts Clotilde took no note of time or distance,
while the growing darkness and the absence of novelty in a ride from
Valricour to Beaujardin, to say nothing of the pre-occupation of her
mind, kept her from observing anything outside of the lumbering vehicle
in which she sat. They had jogged on for a considerable time, however,
when the coach stopped. Under ordinary circumstances this would hardly
have interfered with Clotilde's meditations, the occurrence being
common enough at a period when in France, as in other countries, most
of the roads, except those along which the king himself was accustomed
to travel, were usually in a deplorable condition, notwithstanding the
lessons left behind by those famous old road-makers the Romans, and in
spite of the iniquitous road-laws which threw upon all but the nobles
an intolerable amount of personal labour in the making and maintaining
of the highways. But on the present occasion Clotilde's attention was
arrested by the circumstance that men were busy changing the horses,
and although it was now dark, she noticed at the roadside a great white
stone cross, from which she knew that they must have turned off from
the direct road to Beaujardin. Surprised, an