ess like a wooing day by day, until it
had culminated in her present helpless position.

She was a strong-souled, high-spirited girl, but tonight hope seemed
extinguished in her breast. Florimond, too, seemed to have abandoned
her. Either he had forgotten her, or he was dead, as the Dowager said.
Which might be the true state of things she did not greatly care. The
realization of how utterly she was in the power of Madame de Condillac
and her son, and the sudden chance discovery of how unscrupulously that
power might be wielded, filled her mind to the exclusion of all else.

By the window she sat, watching, without heeding them, the fading
colours in the sky. She was abandoned to these monsters, and it seemed
they would devour her. She could hope for no help from outside since
they had as she believed--slain Monsieur de Garnache. Her mind dwelt for
a moment on that glimpse of rescue that had been hers a week ago, upon
the few hours of liberty which she had enjoyed, but which only seemed
now to increase the dark hopelessness of her imprisonment.

Again with the eyes of her mind she beheld that grim, stalwart figure,
saw his great nose, his greying hair, his fierce mustachios and his
stern, quick eyes. Again she heard the rasp of his metallic voice with
its brisk derision. She saw him in the hall below, his foot upon the
neck of that popinjay of Condillac daring them all to draw a breath,
should he forbid it; again in fancy she rode on the withers of his horse
at the gallop towards Grenoble. A sigh escaped her. Surely that was the
first man who was indeed a man she had ever set eyes on since her father
died. Had Garnache been spared, she would have felt courage and she
would have hoped, for there was something about him that suggested
energy and resource such as it is good to lean upon in times of stress.
Again she heard that brisk, metallic voice: "Are you content, madame?
Have you had fine deeds enough for one day?"

And then, breaking in upon her musings came the very voice of her
day-dream, so suddenly, sounding so natural and lifelike that she almost
screamed, so startled was she.

"Mademoiselle," it said, "I beg that you'll not utterly lose heart. I
have come back to the thing Her Majesty bade me do, and I'll do it, in
spite of that tigress and her cub."

She sat still as a statue, scarce breathing, her eyes fixed upon the
violet sky. The voice had ceased, but still she sat on. Then it was
slowly borne in upon