"How could you send him away, mademoiselle?" said Francine. "Don't you
see how the place is surrounded? we shall never get away! and who will
protect you here?"

"You have a protector of your own," said Marie maliciously, giving in an
undertone Marche-a-Terre's owl cry which she was constantly practising.

Francine colored, and smiled rather sadly at her mistress's gaiety.

"But who is yours?" she said.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil plucked out her dagger, and showed it to the
frightened girl, who dropped on a chair and clasped her hands.

"What have you come here for, Marie?" she cried in a supplicating voice
which asked no answer.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil was busily twisting the branches of holly which
she had gathered.

"I don't know whether this holly will be becoming," she said; "a
brilliant skin like mine may possibly bear a dark wreath of this kind.
What do you think, Francine?"

Several remarks of the same kind as she dressed for the ball showed the
absolute self-possession and coolness of this strange woman. Whoever had
listened to her then would have found it hard to believe in the gravity
of a situation in which she was risking her life. An Indian muslin
gown, rather short and clinging like damp linen, revealed the delicate
outlines of her shape; over this she wore a red drapery, numerous folds
of which, gradually lengthening as they fell by her side, took the
graceful curves of a Greek peplum. This voluptuous garment of the pagan
priestesses lessened the indecency of the rest of the attire which the
fashions of the time suffered women to wear. To soften its immodesty
still further, Marie threw a gauze scarf over her shoulders, left bare
and far too low by the red drapery. She wound the long braids of her
hair into the flat irregular cone above the nape of the neck which gives
such grace to certain antique statues by an artistic elongation of the
head, while a few stray locks escaping from her forehead fell in
shining curls beside her cheeks. With a form and head thus dressed,
she presented a perfect likeness of the noble masterpieces of Greek
sculpture. She smiled as she looked with approval at the arrangement of
her hair, which brought out the beauties of her face, while the scarlet
berries of the holly wreath which she laid upon it repeated charmingly
the color of the peplum. As she twisted and turned a few leaves, to
give capricious diversity to their arrangement, she examined her whole
costume in