nto the large sombre hall to which the old servant had led the
way. Yet, when the man had gone to seek his mistress, the latter took
one more opportunity to plead that he should be gentle with her.

"Remember," he said, "remember, I beseech you, that you have but her
brother's word for what you suspect her of; he was a villain, he
might have lied in his last moments for some reason--perhaps did not
even think those last moments were in truth at hand; might have hoped
to escape after all and profit by the lie. Remember! Oh, remember!"

"I will remember," St. Georges said. Then, with one glance at Boussac,
he added, "But the villain did not lie _then_!"

The domestic came back, and St. Georges learned that the hour for his
explanation, long sought and meditated upon, was at hand. "His
mistress would see monsieur," he said. He would conduct him to her.

In the same room where he had first set eyes on Aurelie de Roquemaure
he saw her again--the old man ushering him in and then swiftly leaving
the room. They were face to face at last! As it had been before, so it
was now--her beauty as she rose on his entrance was strikingly
apparent, compelled regard. And the four years that had passed since
that first meeting had done much to increase, to ripen that beauty;
instead of the budding girl it was a stately woman who now met his
eyes. And the contrast between them was great, was all to her
advantage so far as exterior matters were concerned: he
travel-stained, worn, and with now in his long hair some streaks of
gray; she fresh and beautiful in the long black lace dress she wore, a
rose in her bosom, her hair undisguised by any wig and swept back into
a huge knot behind. "How beautiful she is!" he thought, as he gave her
one glance, "yet how base and contemptible!"

With a swift movement she came toward him from the further end of the
room, her hands extended and her eyes sparkling, exclaiming as she
advanced: "You are free! you are free!" But her greeting met with no
response from him. Could she have expected it, he wondered? Then he
stepped back and coldly said:

"Yes, Mademoiselle de Roquemaure, I am free," while to himself he
said: "So she knew that too. That I was trapped! God! That womankind
can be so base!"

Staggered at the coldness of his first words, affronted at his refusal
to take her outstretched hands, she drew back and looked at him
calmly. Then she said, quietly, "I rejoice to know it," and, pausing,
looke