factor on which I had not
counted. Nevertheless, what I had promised I must fulfil. I was by
honour bound to leave nothing undone that might result in the Vicomte's
enlargement."

Ornbreval laughed softly, but with consummate amusement.

"A sans-culotte with a sense of honour is such an anomaly--" he began,
when Mademoiselle interposed, a note of anger sounding in her voice.

"M. d'Ombreval means to pay you a compliment," she informed La Boulaye,
"but he has such an odd way of choosing his expressions that I feared
you might misunderstand him."

La Boulaye signified his indifference by a smile.

"I am afraid the ci-devant Vicomte has not yet learnt his lesson," said
he; "or else he is like the sinner who upon recovering health forgot
the penitence that had come to him in the days of sickness. But we have
other matters to deal with, Citoyenne, and, in particular, the matter of
the passport. Fool that I am!" he cried bitterly.

"I must return to Paris at once," he announced briskly. "There is no
help for it. We will hope that as yet the way is open to me, and that
I shall be permitted to go and to return unmolested. In such a case the
rest is easy--except that you will have to suffer my company as far as
the frontier."

It was Mademoiselle who accompanied him to the door.

"Monsieur," she said, in a voice that shook with the sincere intensity
of her feelings, "think me not ungrateful that I have said so little.
But your act has overwhelmed me. It is so truly noble, that to offer you
thanks that are but words, seems tome little short of a banality."

"Tut!" he laughed. "I have not yet done half. It will be time to thank
me when we are out of France."

"And you speak so lightly of leaving France?" she cried. "But what is to
become of you? What of your career?"

"Other careers are possible in other countries," he answered, with
a lightness he did not feel. "Who knows perhaps the English or the
Prussians might be amenable to a change of government. I shall seek to
induce one or the other of them to became a republic, and then I shall
become once more a legislator."

With that, and vowing that every moment he remained their chances of
leaving France grew more slender, he took his leave of her, expressing
the hope that he might be back within a couple of hours. Mademoiselle
watched him to the garden gate, then closing the door she returned
within.

She discovered her betrothed--he whom La Boulaye had called her