h a sudden
awkwardness, and she looked away from him what time he waited, hat in
hand, the chill morning breeze faintly stirring a loose strand of his
black hair.

"Monsieur," she faltered at last, "I am come to intercede."

At that a faint smile hovered a second on the Republican's thin lips.

"And is the noblesse of France fallen so low that it sends its women to
intercede for the lives of its men? But, perhaps," he added cynically,
"it had not far to fall."

Her cheeks reddened. His insult to her class acted upon her as a spur
and overcame the irresoluteness that seemed to have beset her.

"To insult the fallen, sir, is worthy of the new regime, whose
representative you are, Enfine! We must take it, I suppose, as we take
everything else in these disordered times--with a bent head and a meek
submission."

"From the little that I have seen, Citoyenne," he answered, very coldly,
roused in his turn, "it rather seems that you take things on your knees
and with appeals for mercy."

"Monsieur," she cried, and her eyes now met his in fearless anger, "if
you persist in these gratuitous insults I shall leave you."

He laughed in rude amusement, and put on his hat. The spell that for a
moment her beauty had cast over him when first she had appeared had been
attenuating. It now broke suddenly, and as he covered himself his whole
manner changed.

"Is this interview of my seeking?" he asked. "It is your brother I
am awaiting. Name of a name, Citoyenne, do you think my patience
inexhaustible? The ci-devant Vicomte promised to attend me here. It was
the boast of your order that whatever sins you might be guilty of you
never broke your word. Have you lost even that virtue, which served you
as a cloak for untold vices? And is your brother fled into the woods
whilst you, his sister, come here to intercede with me for his wretched
life? Pah! In the old days you aroused my hatred by your tyrannies
and your injustices; to-day you weary and disgust me by your ineffable
cowardices, from that gentleman in Paris who now calls himself
Orleans-Egalite downwards."

"Monsieur," she began But he was not yet done. His cheeks were flushed
with a reflection of the heart within.

"Citoyenne, I have a debt to discharge, and I will discharge it in full.
Intercessions are vain with me. I cannot forget. Send me your brother
within ten minutes to meet me here, man to man, and he shall have--all
of you shall have--the chance that lies in such