swain in stooping to pick it up. As I
bowed low in returning the bit of lace to its owner, a voice that I had
learned to know and love whispered in my ear.

"Make your way to the clock landing of the stair; I must have speech
with you," it said; and for a wonder I was cool enough to obey with no
more than a sidelong glance at my lady passing on the arm of another
epauletted dangler.

She was before me at the meeting place, and there was no laughing
welcome in the deep-welled eyes. Instead, they flashed me a look that
made me wince.

"What folly is this, sir?" she demanded. "Will you never have done
taking my honor and your own life into your reckless hands?"

I bowed my head to the storm. With the dagger of my miserable errand
sticking in my heart there was no fight in me.

"I am but come to do your bidding," I said, slowly, for the words cost
me sorely in the coin of anguish. "I had your letter, and if you will
say how I may find Father Matthieu--"

She broke me in the midst. "_Mon Dieu!_" she cried. "Could I guess that
you would come here, into the very noose of the gallows? Oh, how you do
heap scorn on scorn upon me! Once you made me give silent consent to a
falsehood you told; twice, nay, thrice, you have made me disloyal to the
king; and now you come again to make me look the world in the face and
tell a smiling lie to shield you! O Holy Mother, pity me!" And with this
she put her face in her hands and began to sob.

Now we were only measurably isolated on the stair, and some sense of the
hazard we took--a hazard involving her as well as Richard and
myself--steadied me with a sudden shock.

"Control yourself," I whispered. "What is done, is done; and the misery
is not all yours to suffer. Tell me how I may find the priest, and I
will do my errand and begone."

"You can not stay to find him now--you must not," she insisted, coming
out of the fit of despair with a rebound. "He is in the town--indeed, I
know not where he is just now. Can you not endure it a little longer,
Captain Ireton?"

"No," said I, sullenly. "I have been living a lie all these months to
the friend I love best, and I will not do it more."

Could I be mistaken? Surely there was a flash not of anger in the eyes
that were lifted to mine, and a tremulous note of eagerness in the
voice that said: "Then Dick does not know?--you have not told him?"

"No; I have told no one."

"Poor Dick!" she said softly. "I thought he knew, and I--"

S