--of his gestures, his looks;--she was
thoughtful of all.

How strangely intelligent in all her communication! Ah, if it was
eager love that hearkened, it was thoughtful love that spoke!

The story, as she told it, was brief; but the voice never faltered
in telling the tale, and the eyes of Elizabeth, with constant
scrutiny, were upon her listener. She was satisfied, when, having
said all, she paused, and had now no further fear for her own
heart's integrity or of the listener's constancy.

A long silence followed her speech. At length said Mlle. Desperiers,--

"I see it all. You are God's messenger from that other world. I have
believed too little. You are truer and wiser than I. Lead me, dear
child! Shall we go to Foray? I will sail with you tomorrow, if you
say so. Better a prison, with him, than all this freedom, so alone."

"He must be set free, first," said Elizabeth. The manner of her
speaking, her look as well as her tone, might almost have been taken
for a rebuke. Madeline might pardon that.

"I have said so," she answered, mildly. "I have tried to move heaven
and earth. I was but a feeble woman. Still it is a consolation to
know that I have done everything my wit or my love could devise, and
not stopped at what looked like extravagance or indelicacy. What
further, Elizabeth? The man who is now in power, and through whom
alone the king can be reached, will grant him liberty"--

"_He will_?"

"At a price that would take away its value from him."

"What is that price?"

"My life. He wants me for his wife,--a purchase, you perceive."

Elizabeth Montier did not heed the scorn and bitterness of these
words, as Mlle. Desperiers spoke them. The blood in her veins seemed
turning to fire,--it swept through her body and brain like the flood
of a volcano,--and she thought, she who knew the prisoner's life,
and all that captivity was to him,--

"Coward and selfish, that will not instantly give up her life for his!"

A very dismal satisfaction, that the woman he loved best should so
prove unworthy of him! The horror of that satisfaction, its
humiliation and its pain, sufficiently attested to the poor girl who
endured it that her soul's integrity remained secure. As if for a
personal conflict with an enemy, she started to her feet.

"It must not be!" she exclaimed.

And, far from suspecting to whom the words were addressed, to what
the speaker closed her eyes, rebuking her pure heart, the lady
answered,--