riority. She beckoned curtly to Loo and
clattered down the stairs, followed by Barebone. The others did not
attempt to go to their assistance, and the Marquis de Gemosac had a
hundred questions to ask Colville.

The Englishman had little to tell of his own escape. There were so many
more important arrests to be made that the overworked police of Monsieur
de Maupas had only been able to apportion to him a bungler whom Colville
had easily outwitted.

"And Madame St. Pierre Lawrence?" inquired the Marquis.

"Madame quitted Paris on Tuesday for England under the care of John
Turner, who had business in London. He kindly offered to escort her
across the Channel."

"Then she, at all events, is safe," said the Marquis, with a little wave
of the hand indicating his satisfaction. "He is not brilliant, Monsieur
Turner--so few English are--but he is solid, I think."

"I think he is the cleverest man I know," said Dormer Colville,
thoughtfully. And before they had spoken again Loo Barebone returned.

He, like Marie, had grasped at once the serious aspect of the situation,
whereas the Marquis succeeded only in reaching it with a superficial
touch. He prattled of the political crisis in Paris and bade his friends
rest assured that law and order must ultimately prevail. He even seemed
to cherish the comforting assurance that Providence must in the end
interfere on behalf of a Legitimate Succession. For this old noble was
the true son of a father who had believed to the end in that King who
talked grandiloquently of the works of Seneca and Tacitus while
driving from the Temple to his trial, with the mob hooting and yelling
imprecations into the carriage windows.

The Marquis de Gemosac found time to give a polite opinion on John
Turner while the streets of Gemosac were being cleared by the cavalry
from Saintes, and the Gendarmerie, burning briskly, lighted up a scene
of bloodshed.

"We have raised the drawbridge a few feet," said Barebone; "but the
chains are rusted and may easily be broken by a blacksmith. It will
serve to delay them a few minutes; but it is not the mob we seek to
keep out, and any organised attempt to break in would succeed in half an
hour. We must go, of course."

He turned to Colville, with whom he had met and faced difficulties in
the past. Colville might easily have escaped to England with Mrs. St.
Pierre Lawrence, but he had chosen the better part. He had undertaken
a long journey through disturbed Fr