r room in one of the houses which, after this fashion, lined
the _Pont au Change_, sat, on the evening of the day on which Philip de
la Mole had escaped from the Louvre, three persons, the listlessness of
whose attitudes showed that they were all more or less pre-occupied by
painful reflections.

The principal personage of this group--a woman between fifty and sixty
years of age--lay back on a large wooden chair, her eyes fixed on
vacancy. Her dress was of simple dark stuff, very full upon the sleeves
and below the waist, and relieved by a small white standing collar; a
dark coif, of the fashion of the period, covered the grizzled hair,
which was drawn back from the forehead and temples, leaving fully
exposed a face, the rude features and heavy eyebrows of which gave it a
stern character. But in spite of this severity of aspect, there
naturally lurked an expression of goodness about the mouth and eyes,
which spoke of a kindliness of disposition and tenderness of heart,
combined with firmness and almost obstinacy of character. Those eyes,
however, were now vacant and haggard in expression; and that mouth was
contracted as if by some painful thought.

By her side, upon a low stool, was seated a fair girl, whose attire was
as plain as that of the more aged woman; but that lovely form needed no
aids of the toilet to enhance its beauty. The fair brown hair brushed
off from the white brow, in the graceless mode of the day, hid nothing
of a face which had all the purity of some beautiful Madonna; although
the cheek was pale, and the lines of the physiognomy were already more
sharpened than is usual at years so young. Her head, however, was now
bent down over a large book which lay upon her knees, and from which she
appeared to have been reading aloud to the elder woman; and, as she sat,
a tear dropped into its pages, which she hastily brushed away with her
fair hand.

The third person, who completed the group, was a young man scarcely
beyond the years of boyhood. His good-looking round face was bronzed and
ruddy with fresh colour, and his dark eyes and full mouth were
expressive of natural gaiety and vivacity. But he, too, sat leaning his
elbows upon his knees, and gazing intently, and with a look of anxiety,
upon the fair girl before him; until, as he saw the tear fall from her
eye, he turned impatiently upon his stool, and proceeded to polish, with
an animation which was not that of industry, the barrel of a gun which
lay