hich he wished to
be spick and span.

"For I expect a visitor," said Captain Jack gravely.

When in due course the fellow had carried out these wishes with the
surly good-nature characteristic of him, Jack set himself to wait.

The square of sky through his window grew from dazzling white to
deepest blue, the shadows travelled along the blank walls, the street
noises rose and fell in capricious gusts, the church bells jangled,
all the myriad sounds which had come to measure his solitary day
struck their familiar course upon his ear; yet the expected visitor
delayed. But the captain, among other things, had learnt to possess
his soul in patience of late; and so, as he slowly paced his cell
after his wont, he betrayed neither irritation nor melancholy. If she
did not come to-day, then it would be to-morrow. He had no doubt of
this.

The afternoon had waned--golden without, full of grey shadows in the
prison room--when light footfalls mingled with the well-known heavy
tread and jangle of keys, along the echoing passage.

There was the murmur of a woman's voice, a word of gruff reply, and
the next moment a tall form wrapped in a many-folded black cloak and
closely veiled, advanced a few steps into the room, while, as before,
the turnkey retired and locked the door behind him.

His heart beating so thickly that for the moment utterance was
impossible, Captain Jack made one hurried pace forward with
outstretched hands, only to check himself, however, and let them fall
by his side. He would meet her calmly, humbly, as he had resolved.

The woman threw back her veil, and it was Molly's dark gaze, Molly's
brown face, flushed and haggard, yet always beautiful, that looked out
of the black frame.

An ashen pallor spread over the prisoner's countenance.

"Madeleine?" he asked in a whisper; then, with a loud ring of stern
demand, "_Madeleine!_"

"I went for her, I went for her myself--I did all I could--she would
not come."

_She would not come!_

It is a sort of unwritten law that the supremely afflicted have the
right, where possible, to the gratification of the least of their
wishes. That Madeleine could refuse to come to him in his last
extremity, had never once crossed her lover's brain. He stood
bewildered.

"She is not ill?"

"Ill!" Lady Landale's red lips curved in scorn, "No--not ill--but a
coward!" She spat the word fiercely as if at the offender's face.

There fell a minute's silence, broken only by a