render
thorny the softest bed, so, sometimes, present good has the power to
obscure the future evil. As Anne sank back on the settle, her trembling
limbs almost declining to bear her, her eyes fell on her companion.
Failing to rouse her, he had seated himself on the other side of the
hearth, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his hands, in an attitude
of deep thought. And little by little, as she looked at him, her cheeks
grew, if not red, less pale, her eyes lost their tense and hopeless
gaze. She heaved a quivering sigh, and slowly carried her look round the
room.

Its homely comfort, augmented by the hour and the firelight, seemed to
lap them round. The door was locked, the shutters were closed, the lamp
burned cheerfully. And he sat opposite--sat as if they had been long
married. The colour grew deeper in her face as she gazed; she breathed
more quickly; her eyes shone. What evil cannot be softened, what
misfortune cannot be lightened to a woman by the knowledge that she is
loved by the man she loves? That where all have fled, he remains, and
that neither fear of death nor word of man can keep him from her side?

He looked up in the end, and caught the look on her face, the look that
a woman bestows on one man only in her life. In a moment he was on his
knees beside her, holding her hands, covering them with kisses, vowing
to save her, to save her--or to die with her!

CHAPTER XX.

IN THE DARKENED ROOM.

Claude flung the cloak from his head and shoulders, and sat up. It was
morning--morning, after that long, dear sitting together--and he stared
confusedly about him. He had been dreaming; all night he had slept
uneasily. But the cry that had roused him, the cry that had started that
quick beating of the heart, the cry that still rang in his waking ears
and frightened him, was no dream.

As he rose to his feet, his senses began to take in the scene; he
remembered what had happened and where he was. The shutters were lowered
and open. The cold grey light of the early morning at this deadest
season of the year fell cheerlessly on the living-room; in which for the
greater safety of the house he had insisted on passing the night. Anne,
whose daily task it was to open the shutters, had been down then: she
must have been down, or whence the pile of fresh cones and splinters
that crackled, and spirted flame about the turned log. Perhaps it was
her mother's cry that had roused him; and she had re-ascended to