for the wrongs I
have endured at the hands of your family, Citoyenne."

"I will do what you will, Monsieur. Bethink you that I am pleading for
the life of the man I am to marry."

He looked down upon her now in an emotion that in its way was as
powerful as her own. Yet his voice was hard and sternly governed as he
now asked her,

"Is that an argument, Mademoiselle? Is it an argument likely to prevail
with the man who, for his twice-confessed love of you, has suffered sore
trials?"

He felt that in a way she had conquered him; his career, which but that
day had seemed all-sufficing to him, was now fallen into the limbo of
disregard. The one thing whose possession would render his life a happy
one, whose absence would leave him now a lasting unhappiness, knelt here
at his feet. Forgotten were the wrongs he had suffered, forgotten the
purpose to humble and to punish. Everything was forgotten and silenced
by the compelling voice of his blood, which cried out that he loved her.
He stooped to her and caught her wrists in a grip that made her wince.
His voice grew tense.

"If you would bribe me to save his life, Suzanne, there is but one price
that you can pay."

"And that?" she gasped her eyes looking up with a scared expression into
his masterful face.

"Yourself," he whispered, with an ardour that almost amounted to
fierceness.

She gazed a second at him in growing alarm, then she dragged her hands
from his grasp, and covering her face she fell a-sobbing.

"Do not misunderstand me," he cried, as he stood erect over her. "If
you would have Ombreval saved and sent out of France you must become my
wife."

"Your wife?" she echoed, pausing in her weeping, and for a moment an odd
happiness seemed to fill her. But as suddenly as it had arisen did
she stifle it. Was she not the noble daughter of the noble Marquis de
Bellecour and was not this a lowly born member of a rabble government?
There could be no such mating. A shudder ran through her. "I cannot,
Monsieur, I cannot!" she sobbed.

He looked at her a moment with a glance that was almost of surprise,
then, with a slight compression of the lips and the faintest raising of
the shoulders, he turned from her and strode over to the window. There
was a considerable concourse of people on their way to the Place de la
Republique, for the hour of the tumbrils was at hand.

A half-dozen of those unsexed viragos produced by the Revolution, in
filthy garments, red bonnets