orror;
now she rose, rose to her full height, and there was a livid and
deadly light in her eyes,--the light of conscious courage and power and
revenge. "Fool," she muttered, "with all his craft! Fool, fool! As if,
in the war of household perfidy, the woman did not always conquer! Man's
only chance is to be mailed in honour."

"But," said Gabriel, overhearing her, "but you do not remember what it
is. There is nothing you can see and guard against. It is not like an
enemy face to face; it is death in the food, in the air, in the touch.
You stretch out your arms in the dark, you feel nothing, and you die!
Oh, do not fancy that I have not thought well (for I am almost a man
now) if there were no means to resist,--there are none! As well make
head against the plague,--it is in the atmosphere. Come to England, and
return. Live poorly, if you must, but live--but live!"

"Return to England poor and despised, and bound still to him, or a
disgraced and divorced wife,--disgraced by the low-born dependant on my
kinsman's house,--and fawn perhaps upon my sister and her husband for
bread! Never! I am at my post, and I will not fly."

"Brave, brave!" said the boy, clapping his hands, and sincerely moved by
a daring superior to his own; "I wish I could help you!"

Lucretia's eye rested on him with the full gaze, so rare in its looks.
She drew him to her and kissed his brow. "Boy, through life, whatever
our guilt and its doom, we are bound to each other. I may yet live
to have wealth; if so, it is yours as a son's. I may be iron to
others,--never to you. Enough of this; I must reflect!" She passed her
hands over her eyes a moment, and resumed: "You would help me in my
self-defence; I think you can. You have been more alert in your watch
than I have. You must have means I have not secured. Your father guards
well all his papers."

"I have keys to every desk. My foot passed the threshold of that room
under the roof before yours. But no; his powers can never be yours!
He has never confided to you half his secrets. He has antidotes for
every--every--"

"Hist! what noise is that? Only the shower on the casements. No, no,
child, that is not my object. Cadoudal's conspiracy! Your father has
letters from Fouche which show how he has betrayed others who are
stronger to avenge than a woman and a boy."

"Well?"

"I would have those letters. Give me the keys. But hold! Gabriel,
Gabriel, you may yet misjudge him. This woman--wife to the d