estates,
and permit her to retire into a cloister. She stood motionless, like a
terrified female in a storm, who hears the thunder roll on every side of
her, and apprehends in every fresh peal the bolt which is to strike her
dead. The Countess of Crevecoeur, a woman of spirit equal to her birth
and to the beauty which she preserved even in her matronly years, judged
it necessary to interfere.

"My Lord Duke," she said, "my fair cousin is under my protection. I know
better than your Grace how women should be treated, and we will leave
this presence instantly, unless you use a tone and language more
suitable to our rank and sex."

The Duke burst out into a laugh. "Crevecoeur," he said, "thy tameness
hath made a lordly dame of thy Countess; but that is no affair of mine.
Give a seat to yonder simple girl, to whom, so far from feeling enmity,
I design the highest grace and honour.--Sit down, mistress, and tell
us at your leisure what fiend possessed you to fly from your native
country, and embrace the trade of a damsel adventurous."

With much pain, and not without several interruptions, Isabelle
confessed that, being absolutely determined against a match proposed
to her by the Duke of Burgundy, she had indulged the hope of obtaining
protection of the Court of France.

"And under protection of the French Monarch," said Charles. "Of that,
doubtless, you were well assured?"

"I did indeed so think myself assured," said the Countess Isabelle,
"otherwise I had not taken a step so decided."

Here Charles looked upon Louis with a smile of inexpressible bitterness,
which the King supported with the utmost firmness, except that his lip
grew something whiter than it was wont to be.

"But my information concerning King Louis's intentions towards us,"
continued the Countess, after a short pause, "was almost entirely
derived from my unhappy aunt, the Lady Hameline, and her opinions were
formed upon the assertions and insinuations of persons whom I have since
discovered to be the vilest traitors and most faithless wretches in the
world."

She then stated, in brief terms, what she had since come to learn of
the treachery of Marthon, and of Hayraddin Maugrabin, and added that
she "entertained no doubt that the elder Maugrabin, called Zamet,
the original adviser of their flight, was capable of every species of
treachery, as well as of assuming the character of an agent of Louis
without authority."

There was a pause while the C