and
bridegroom, and seriously reflecting on the events of the future.
Great changes have passed over that domestic firmament in which he
prophetically discerned the little warning cloud. Greater changes have
passed over the firmament of France.

What was revolt five years ago is Revolution now--revolution which
has ingulfed thrones, and principalities, and powers; which has set
up crownless, inhereditary kings and counselors of its own, and has
bloodily torn them down again by dozens; which has raged and raged on
unrestrainedly in fierce earnest, until but one king can still govern
and control it for a little while. That king is named Terror, and
seventeen hundred and ninety-four is the year of his reign.

Monsieur Lomaque, land-steward no longer, sits alone in an
official-looking room in one of the official buildings of Paris. It is
another July evening, as fine as that evening when he and Trudaine sat
talking together on the bench overlooking the Seine. The window of the
room is wide open, and a faint, pleasant breeze is beginning to flow
through it. But Lomaque breathes uneasily, as if still oppressed by the
sultry midday heat; and there are signs of perplexity and trouble in his
face as he looks down absently now and then into the street.

The times he lives in are enough of themselves to sadden any man's face.
In the Reign of Terror no living being in all the city of Paris can rise
in the morning and be certain of escaping the spy, the denunciation, the
arrest, or the guillotine, before night. Such times are trying enough to
oppress any man's spirits; but Lomaque is not thinking of them or caring
for them now. Out of a mass of papers which lie before him on his old
writing-table, he has just taken up and read one, which has carried his
thoughts back to the past, and to the changes which have taken place
since he stood alone on the doorstep of Trudaine's house, pondering on
what might happen.

More rapidly even than he had foreboded those changes had occurred.
In less time even than he had anticipated, the sad emergency for which
Rose's brother had prepared, as for a barely possible calamity,
overtook Trudaine, and called for all the patience, the courage, the
self-sacrifice which he had to give for his sister's sake. By slow
gradations downward, from bad to worse, her husband's character
manifested itself less and less disguisedly almost day by day.
Occasional slights, ending in habitual neglect; careless estr