nt yourself
with the mere precaution of concealing the child's identity? Would
you not go farther and provide the nurse with a subterfuge, a blind,
something for the woman to produce and say, 'This is not the little
Dauphin. This is so-and-so. See, here is the portrait of his mother?'
What so effective, I ask you? What so likely to be believed as a scandal
directed against the hated aristocrats? Can you advance anything against
that theory?"

"No, Monsieur," replied Turner.

"But Monsieur de Bourbon knows of these doubts," went on the Marquis.
"They have even touched his own mind, I know that. But he has continued
to fight undaunted. He has made sacrifices--any looking at his face
can see that. It was not in France that he looked for happiness, but
elsewhere. He was not heart-whole--I who have seen him with the most
beautiful women in France paying court to him know that. But this
sacrifice, also, he made for the sake of France. Or perhaps some woman
of whom we know nothing stepped back and bade him go forward alone, for
the sake of his own greatness--who can tell?"

Again no one answered him. He had not perceived Miriam, and John Turner,
with that light step which sometimes goes with a vast bulk, had placed
himself between her and the firelight. Monsieur de Gemosac rose to his
feet and stood looking seaward. The snow-clouds were rolling away to the
west, and the moon, breaking through, was beginning to illumine the wild
sky.

"Gentlemen," said the Marquis, "they have been gone a long time?"

Captain Clubbe moved restlessly, but he made no answer. The Marquis
had, of course, spoken in French, and the Captain had no use for that
language.

The group round the fire had dwindled until only half a dozen remained.
One after another the watchers had moved away uneasily toward the beach.
The Marquis was right--the boat had been gone too long.

At last the moon broke through, and the snowy scene was almost as light
as day.

John Turner was looking along the beach to the south, and one after
another the watchers by the fire turned their anxious eyes in the same
direction. The sea, whipped white, was bare of any wreck. "The Last
Hope" of Farlingford was gone. She had broken up or rolled into deep
water.

A number of men were coming up the shingle in silence. Sea Andrew,
dragging his feet wearily, approached in advance of them.

"Boat's thrown up on the beach," he said to Captain Clubbe. "Stove in by
a sea. We've fou