e big sous--do you like sous?"

"Yes."

"You like sous, and you want to kill the Gars who killed your
father--well, I'll take care of you. Ah! Marie," he muttered, after a
pause, "you yourself shall betray him, as you engaged to do! She is too
violent to suspect me--passion never reflects. She does not know the
marquis's writing. Yes, I can set a trap into which her nature will
drive her headlong. But I must first see Hulot."

Mademoiselle de Verneuil and Francine were deliberating on the means of
saving the marquis from the more than doubtful generosity of Corentin
and Hulot's bayonets.

"I could go and warn him," said the Breton girl.

"But we don't know where he is," replied Marie; "even I, with the
instincts of love, could never find him."

After making and rejecting a number of plans Mademoiselle de Verneuil
exclaimed, "When I see him his danger will inspire me."

She thought, like other ardent souls, to act on the spur of the moment,
trusting to her star, or to that instinct of adroitness which rarely, if
ever, fails a woman. Perhaps her heart was never so wrung. At times she
seemed stupefied, her eyes were fixed, and then, at the least noise, she
shook like a half-uprooted tree which the woodsman drags with a rope to
hasten its fall. Suddenly, a loud report from a dozen guns echoed from
a distance. Marie turned pale and grasped Francine's hand. "I am dying,"
she cried; "they have killed him!"

The heavy footfall of a man was heard in the antechamber. Francine went
out and returned with a corporal. The man, making a military salute to
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, produced some letters, the covers of which
were a good deal soiled. Receiving no acknowledgment, the Blue said as
he withdrew, "Madame, they are from the commandant."

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, a prey to horrible presentiments, read a
letter written apparently in great haste by Hulot:--

"Mademoiselle--a party of my men have just caught a messenger from
the Gars and have shot him. Among the intercepted letters is one
which may be useful to you and I transmit it--etc."

"Thank God, it was not he they shot," she exclaimed, flinging the letter
into the fire.

She breathed more freely and took up the other letter, enclosed by
Hulot. It was apparently written to Madame du Gua by the marquis.

"No, my angel," the letter said, "I cannot go to-night to La
Vivetiere. You must lose your wager with the count. I triumph over
the Republic in t