espectful
fervour.

"Amen," the girl replied, and they fell silent.

Presently she returned to the subject of her betrothed.

"If Florimond is living, this prolonged absence, this lack of news
is very strange. It is three months since last we heard of him--four
months, indeed. Yet he must have been apprised of his father's death,
and that should have occasioned his return."

"Was he indeed apprised of it?" inquired Garnache. "Did you, yourself,
communicate the news to him?"

"I?" she cried. "But no, monsieur. We do not correspond."

"That is a pity," said Garnache, "for I believe that the knowledge of
the Marquis's death was kept from him by his stepmother."

"Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed, in horror. "Do you mean that he may still be
in ignorance of it?"

"Not that. A month ago a courier was dispatched to him by the
Queen-Mother. The last news of him some four months old, as you have
said--reported him at Milan in the service of Spain. Thither was the
courier sent to find him and to deliver him letters setting forth what
was toward at Condillac."

"A month ago?" she said. "And still we have no word. I am full of fears
for him, monsieur."

"And I," said Garnache, "am full of hope that we shall have news of him
at any moment."

That he was well justified of his hope was to be proven before they were
many days older. Meanwhile Garnache continued to play his part of gaoler
to the entire satisfaction and increased confidence of the Condillacs,
what time he waited patiently for the appointed night when it should be
his friend Arsenio's turn to take the guard.

On that fateful Wednesday "Battista" sought out--as had now become his
invariable custom--his compatriot as soon as the time of his noontide
rest was come, the hour at which they dined at Condillac. He found
Arsenio sunning himself in the outer courtyard, for it seemed that year
that as the winter approached the warmth increased. Never could man
remember such a Saint Martin's Summer as was this.

In so far as the matter of their impending flight was concerned,
"Battista" was as brief as he could be.

"Is all well?" he asked. "Shall you be on guard to-night?"

"Yes. It is my watch from sunset till dawn. At what hour shall we be
stirring?"

Garnache pondered a moment, stroking that firm chin of his, on which the
erstwhile stubble had now grown into a straggling, unkempt beard--and
it plagued him not a little, for a close observer might have discovered
th