e awoke him, and with a spring he was on his legs, and
drawing a pistol from his bosom, cried out,--

"Ha! what is 't? Why, Burke, it 's you! What hour is it?"

"Not four yet. I 'm sorry to have disturbed you, De Beauvais; but the
chair here--"

"Yes, yes; I placed it so last night. I felt so very heavy that I could
not trust myself with waking to a slight noise. Where to, so early? Ah!
these pickets; I forgot." And with that he lay down again, and before I
left the house was fast asleep once more.

Some trifling details of duty detained me at one or two of the outposts,
and it was beyond my usual time when I turned homeward. I had but just
reached the broad alley that leads to the foot of the great terrace,
when I saw a figure before me hastening on towards the chateau. The
flutter of the dress showed it to be a woman; and then the thought
flashed on me,--it was Mademoiselle de Meudon. Yes, it was her step; I
knew it well. She had left the place thus early to meet De Beauvais.

Without well knowing what I did, I had increased my speed, and was now
rapidly overtaking her, when the noise of my footsteps on the ground
made her turn about and look back. I stopped short suddenly. An
indistinct sense of something culpable on my part in thus pursuing her
flitted across my mind, and I could not move. There she stood, too,
motionless; but for a second or two only, and then beckoned to me with
her hand. I could scarcely trust my eyes, nor did I dare to stir till
she had repeated the motion twice or thrice.

As I drew near, I remarked that her eyes were red with weeping, and her
face pale as death. For a moment she gazed steadfastly at me, and then,
with a voice whose accent I can never forget, she said,--

"And you, too, the dearest friend of my own Charles, whose very deathbed
spoke of loyalty to him, how have you been drawn from your allegiance?"

I stood amazed and astounded, unable to utter a word in reply, when she
resumed,--

"For them there is reason, too: they lived, or their fathers did, in
the sunshine of the old Monarchy; wealth, rank, riches, power,--all were
theirs. But you, who came amongst us with high hopes of greatness,
where others have earned them on the field of battle,--whose youth is
a guarantee that base and unworthy thoughts should form no part of his
motives, and whose high career began under the very eyes of him, the
idol of every soldier's heart,--oh I why turn from such a path as this,
to da