at abominable deceit, _ma tante_!" she cried, and quite against her
will tears of wrath and of disappointment rose to her eyes. "What
villainy! what odious, execrable treachery!"

Madame shrugged her shoulders and took up her knitting.

"These days, my dear," she said with unwonted placidity, "the world is
so full of treachery that men and women absorb it by every pore."

"But I shall not leave it at that," rejoined Crystal resolutely. "I'll
find a means of punishing that vile traitor . . . I'll make him feel the
hatred which he has so richly deserved--I shall not rest till I have
made him suffer as he makes me suffer now. . . ."

"My dear--my dear--" protested Mme. la Duchesse, not a little shocked at
the girl's vehemence.

Indeed, Crystal's otherwise sweet, gentle, yielding personality seemed
completely transformed: for the moment she was just a sensitive woman
who has been hit and hurt, and whose desire for retaliation is keener,
more relentless than that of a man. All the soft look in her blue eyes
had gone--they looked dark and hard--her fair curls were matted against
her damp forehead; indeed, Madame thought that for the moment all
Crystal's beauty had gone--the sweet, submissive beauty of the girl, the
grace of movement, the shy, appealing gentleness of her ways. She now
looked all determination, resentment, and, above all, revenge.

"The dear child," sighed the Duchesse over her knitting, "it is the
English blood in her. Those people never know how to accept the
inevitable: they are always wanting to fight someone for something and
never know when they are beaten."

CHAPTER VII

THE ASCENT OF THE CAPITOL

I

And the triumphal march from the gulf of Jouan continued uninterrupted
to Paris.

After Laffray and Grenoble, Lyons, where the silk-weavers of La
Guillotiere assembled in their thousands to demolish the barricades
which had been built up on their bridge against the arrival of the
Emperor, and watched his entry into their city waving kerchiefs and hats
in his honour, and tricolour flags and cockades fished out of cupboards,
where they had lain hidden but not forgotten for one whole year.

After Lyons, Villefranche, where sixty thousand peasants and workmen
awaited his arrival at the foot of the tree of Liberty, on the top of
which a brass eagle, the relic of some old standard, glistened like gold
as it caught the rays of the setting sun.

And Nevers, where the townsfolk urged the regim