d sat talking together long after sunset, and had let
the darkness steal on them insensibly, as people will who are only
occupied with quiet, familiar conversation. Thus it happened, by a
curious coincidence, that just as Lomaque was blowing out his candles at
the office Rose was lighting the reading-lamp at her brother's lodgings.

Five years of disappointment and sorrow had sadly changed her to outward
view. Her face looked thinner and longer; the once delicate red and
white of her complexion was gone; her figure had wasted under the
influence of some weakness, which had already made her stoop a little
when she walked. Her manner had lost its maiden shyness, only to become
unnaturally quiet and subdued. Of all the charms which had so fatally,
yet so innocently, allured her heartless husband, but one remained--the
winning gentleness of her voice. It might be touched now and then with a
note of sadness, but the soft attraction of its even, natural tone still
remained. In the marring of all other harmonies, this one harmony had
been preserved unchanged. Her brother, though his face was careworn, and
his manner sadder than of old, looked less altered from his former
self. It is the most fragile material which soonest shows the flaw. The
world's idol, Beauty, holds its frailest tenure of existence in the one
Temple where we most love to worship it.

"And so you think, Louis, that our perilous undertaking has really ended
well by this time?" said Rose, anxiously, as she lighted the lamp and
placed the glass shade over it. "What a relief it is only to hear you
say you think we have succeeded at last!"

"I said I hope, Rose," replied her brother.

"Well, even hoped is a great word from you, Louis--a great word from any
one in this fearful city, and in these days of Terror."

She stopped suddenly, seeing her brother raise his hand in warning. They
looked at each other in silence and listened. The sound of footsteps
going slowly past the house--ceasing for a moment just beyond it--then
going on again--came through the open window. There was nothing else,
out-of-doors or in, to disturb the silence of the night--the deadly
silence of Terror which, for months past, had hung over Paris. It was a
significant sign of the times, that even a passing footstep, sounding
a little strangely at night, was subject for suspicion, both to brother
and sister--so common a subject, that they suspended their conversation
as a matter of course,