between them.

"I have no fear," she replied in a low voice. "Yet--if you fail, may He
forgive you as fully as I must forgive you. What shall I say to you on
my part, Messer Claude?"

"That you love me."

"I love you," she murmured with an intonation which ravished the young
man's heart and brought the blood to his cheeks. "I love you. What
more?"

"There is no more," he cried. "There can be no more. If that be true,
nothing matters."

"No!" she said, beginning to tremble under a weight of emotion too heavy
for her, following as it did the excitement of the night. "No!" she
continued, raising her eyes which had fallen before the ardour of his
gaze. "But there must be something you wish to ask me. You must wish to
know----"

"I have heard what I wished to know."

"But----"

"Tell me what you please."

She stood in thought an instant: then, with a sigh, "He came to me last
evening," she said, "when you were at his house."

"Messer Blondel?"

"Yes. He wished me to procure for him a certain drug that Messer
Basterga kept in his room."

Claude stared. "In a steel casket chained to the wall?" he asked.

"Yes," she whispered with some surprise. "You knew of it, then? He had
tried to procure it through Louis, and on the pretence that the box
contained papers needed by the State. Failing in that he came last
evening to me, and told me the truth."

"The truth?" Claude asked, wondering. "But was it the truth?"

"It was." Her eyes, like stars on a rainy night, shone softly. "I have
proved it." Again, with a ring of exultation in her voice, "I have
proved it!" she cried.

"How?"

"There was in the box a drug, he told me, possessed of an almost
miraculous power over disease of body and mind; so rare and so wonderful
that none could buy it, and he knew of but this one dose, of which
Messer Basterga had possessed himself. He begged me to take it and to
give it to him. He had on him, he said, a fatal illness, and if he did
not get this--he must die." Her voice shook. "He must die! Now God help
him!"

"You took it."

"I took it." Her face, as her eyes dropped before his, betrayed trouble
and doubt. "I took it," she continued, trembling. "If I have done wrong,
God forgive me. For I stole it."

His face betrayed his amazement, but he did not release her hands.
"Why?" he said.

"To give it to her," she answered. "To my mother. I thought then that it
was right--it was a chance. I thought--now I don't know, I d