lay open on the table
between them, and she had in her hand the sealed packet which Percy had
given her just ten days ago, and which she was only to open if all hope
seemed to be dead, if nothing appeared to stand any longer between that
one dear life and irretrievable shame.

A small lamp placed on the table threw a feeble yellow light on the
squalid, ill-furnished room, for it lacked still an hour or so before
dawn. Armand's concierge had brought her lodger's letter, and Marguerite
had quickly despatched a brief reply to him, a reply that held love and
also encouragement.

Then she had summoned Sir Andrew. He never had a thought of leaving her
during these days of dire trouble, and he had lodged all this while in a
tiny room on the top-most floor of this house in the Rue de Charonne.

At her call he had come down very quickly, and now they sat together at
the table, with the oil-lamp illumining their pale, anxious faces; she
the wife and he the friend holding a consultation together in this most
miserable hour that preceded the cold wintry dawn.

Outside a thin, persistent rain mixed with snow pattered against the
small window panes, and an icy wind found out all the crevices in
the worm-eaten woodwork that would afford it ingress to the room. But
neither Marguerite nor Ffoulkes was conscious of the cold. They had
wrapped their cloaks round their shoulders, and did not feel the chill
currents of air that caused the lamp to flicker and to smoke.

"I can see now," said Marguerite in that calm voice which comes so
naturally in moments of infinite despair--"I can see now exactly what
Percy meant when he made me promise not to open this packet until it
seemed to me--to me and to you, Sir Andrew--that he was about to play
the part of a coward. A coward! Great God!" She checked the sob that had
risen to her throat, and continued in the same calm manner and quiet,
even voice:

"You do think with me, do you not, that the time has come, and that we
must open this packet?"

"Without a doubt, Lady Blakeney," replied Ffoulkes with equal
earnestness. "I would stake my life that already a fortnight ago
Blakeney had that same plan in his mind which he has now matured.
Escape from that awful Conciergerie prison with all the precautions so
carefully taken against it was impossible. I knew that alas! from the
first. But in the open all might yet be different. I'll not believe it
that a man like Blakeney is destined to perish at