he two men that had entered. One of these was Captain Juste,
the officer in command of the military; the other was a tall man, with
a pale face, an aquiline nose, a firm jaw, and eyes that were very
stern--either of habit or because they now rested upon the man who four
years ago had used him so cruelly.

He stood a moment in the doorway as if enjoying the amazement which had
been sown by his coming. There was no mistaking him. It was the same La
Boulaye of four years ago, and yet it was not quite the same. The face
had lost its boyishness, and the strenuous life he had lived had scored
it with lines that gave him the semblance of a greater age than was his.
The old, poetic melancholy that had dwelt in the secretary's countenance
was now changed to strength and firmness. Although little known as yet
to the world at large, the great ones of the Revolution held him in high
esteem, and looked upon him as a power to be reckoned with in the near
future. Of Robespierre--who, it was said, had discovered him and brought
him to Paris--he was the protege and more than friend, a protection and
friendship this which in '93 made any man almost omnipotent in France.

He was dressed in a black riding-suit, relieved only by the white
neck-cloth and the tricolour sash of office about his waist. He removed
his cocked hat, beneath which the hair was tied in a club with the same
scrupulous care as of old.

Slowly he advanced into the salon, and his sombre eyes passed from the
Marquis to Mademoiselle. As they rested upon her some of the sternness
seemed to fade from their glance. He found in her a change almost as
great as that which she had found in him. The lighthearted, laughing
girl of nineteen, who had scorned his proffered love when he had wooed
her that April morning to such disastrous purpose, was now ripened into
a stately woman of three-and-twenty. He had thought his boyish passion
dead and buried, and often in the years that were gone had he smiled
softly to himself at the memory of his ardour, as we smile at the
memory of our youthful follies. Yet now, upon beholding her again, so
wondrously transformed, so tall and straight, and so superbly beautiful,
he experienced an odd thrill and a weakening of the stern purpose that
had brought him to Bellecour.

Then his glance moved on. A moment it rested on the supercilious,
high-bred countenance of the Vicomte d'Ombreval, standing with so
proprietary an air beside her, then it passe