position so strange and obviously so full of peril. As soon as she
could collect herself, however, a light broke in upon her, and with it
a faint hope of escape.

"Whoever you are," she exclaimed, calling to her unknown attendant, who
now continued to ride close to the window, perhaps to stop promptly any
possible attempt to give an alarm, "whoever you are, you have simply
made a stupid mistake, which will only get you into trouble. I am not
the lady you suppose. No, sirrah," she added, as her anger made her
for the moment forget her danger, "I am Mademoiselle de Valricour; so
now you will see that if you dare to attempt to carry out your villainy
you will have to pay dearly for it the moment that I can send either to
Valricour or to Beaujardin."

"A very likely thing, no doubt," replied the horseman; "I have had that
sort of trick tried upon me more than once; but to tell you the truth I
neither know nor care a sou whether you be what you say you are or not.
I have my orders and I stick to them, so there's an end of it." With
these words the man dropped a few paces behind, and left Clotilde to a
very different train of meditations from those which had been so
startlingly interrupted.

There could not be a doubt that she had fallen into a trap intended for
another victim, and that the object of this nefarious plot was to put a
stop to the engagement between Marguerite Lacroix and the young
marquis. The thought that such foul means should be used for the
purpose against her bosom friend brought the hot blood into Clotilde's
cheeks, and she stamped her little foot impetuously in the height of
her indignation. Then she paused, and her colour fled again as she
bethought her of what might be the end of it all if she should be
unable to communicate with her mother or the Marquis de Beaujardin, and
should be left to----

To what? More than once she had heard M. de Crillon talk--and very
unconcernedly too--of the living death of those who unhappily became
the victims of a _lettre de cachet_. Yes, she remembered well how
once, in order to gratify her importunate curiosity, he had told her of
people sent to Pignerol, St. Michel, or Isle Marguerite, never to be
heard of more. He had actually taken to himself some little share of
credit for the dread inspired far and near by the terrible length of
the merciless arm which could strike down an enemy at the court of some
foreign potentate. Not long since, indeed, it ha