sacrifice on
her part of every hope of future happiness. Her girlish love for St.
Genis had opened her eyes to the possibilities of happiness; she knew
that Life could hold out a veritable cornucopia of delight and joy in a
union which was hallowed by Love, and her ready sacrifice was therefore
all the greater, all the more sublime, because it was not offered up in
ignorance.

But all that now was changed. She was once more free to indulge in those
dreams which had gladdened the days and nights of her lonely girlhood
out in far-off England: dreams which somehow had not even found their
culmination when St. Genis first told her of his love for her. They had
always been golden dreams which had haunted her in those distant days,
dreams of future happiness and of love which are seldom absent from a
young girl's mind, especially if she is a little lonely, has few
pleasures and is surrounded with an atmosphere of sadness.

Crystal de Cambray, standing on the perron of her stately home, felt but
little sorrow at leaving it to-day: she had hardly had the time in one
brief year to get very much attached to it: the sense of unreality which
had been born in her when her father led her through its vast halls and
stately parks had never entirely left her. The little home in England,
the tiny sitting-room with its bow window, and small front garden edged
with dusty evergreens, was far more real to her even now. She felt as if
the last year with its pomp and gloomy magnificence was all a dream and
that she was once more on the threshold of reality now, on the point of
waking, when she would find herself once more in her narrow iron bed and
see the patched and darned muslin curtains gently waving in the draught.

But for the moment she was glad enough to give herself to the delight of
this sudden consciousness of freedom. She sniffed the sharp, frosty air
with dilated nostrils like a young Arab filly that scents the
illimitable vastness of meadowland around her. The excitement of the
coming adventure thrilled her: she watched with glowing eyes the
preparations for the journey, the bestowal under the cushions of the
carriage of the money which was to help King Louis to preserve his
throne.

In a sense she was sorry that her father and her aunt were coming too.
She would have loved to fly across country as a trusted servant of her
King; but when the time came to make a start she took her place in the
big travelling coach with a light