nd supplication.

Angelique's keen eye, which nothing escaped, needed not a second glance
to recognize the unmistakable grace of Amelie de Repentigny and the
nobility of the Lady de Tilly.

She started at sight of these relatives of Le Gardeur's, but did not
wonder at their presence, for she already knew that they had returned to
the city immediately after the abduction of Le Gardeur by the Chevalier
de Pean.

Startled, frightened, and despairing, with aching hearts but unimpaired
love, Amelie and the Lady de Tilly had followed Le Gardeur and
reoccupied their stately house in the city, resolved to leave no means
untried, no friends unsolicited, no prayers unuttered to rescue him from
the gulf of perdition into which he had again so madly plunged.

Within an hour after her return, Amelie, accompanied by Pierre
Philibert, had gone to the Palace to seek an interview with her brother.
They were rudely denied. "He was playing a game of piquet for the
championship of the Palace with the Chevalier de Pean, and could
not come if St. Peter, let alone Pierre Philibert, stood at the gate
knocking!"

This reply had passed through the impure lips of the Sieur de Lantagnac
before it reached Amelie and Pierre. They did not believe it came from
their brother. They left the Palace with heavy hearts, after long
and vainly seeking an interview, Philibert resolving to appeal to the
Intendant himself and call him to account at the sword's point, if need
be, for the evident plot in the Palace to detain Le Gardeur from his
friends.

Amelie, dreading some such resolution on the part of Pierre, went back
next day alone to the Palace to try once more to see Le Gardeur.

She was agitated and in tears at the fate of her brother. She was
anxious over the evident danger which Pierre seemed to court, for his
sake and--she would not hide the truth from herself--for her own sake
too; and yet she would not forbid him. She felt her own noble blood
stirred within her to the point that she wished herself a man to be able
to walk sword in hand into the Palace and confront the herd of revellers
who she believed had plotted the ruin of her brother.

She was proud of Pierre, while she trembled at the resolution which
she read in his countenance of demanding as a soldier, and not as a
suppliant, the restoration of Le Gardeur to his family.

Amelie's second visit to the Palace had been as fruitless as her first.
She was denied admittance, with the pro