r, and buried in the nastiest
kitchen-heap in France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but
found nothing to arrest them. There were such wide spaces between the
furniture, the light fell so baldly and cheerlessly over all, the dark
outside air looked in so coldly through the windows, that he thought he
had never seen a church so vast, nor a tomb so melancholy. The regular
sobs of Blanche de Maletroit measured out the time like the ticking of
a clock. He read the device upon the shield over and over again, until
his eyes became obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he
imagined they were swarming with horrible animals; and every now and
again he awoke with a start, to remember that his last two hours were
running, and death was on the march.

Oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did his glance settle on the
girl herself. Her face was bowed forward and covered with her hands,
and she was shaken at intervals by the convulsive hiccup of grief.
Even thus she was not an unpleasant object to dwell upon, so plump and
yet so fine, with a warm brown skin, and the most beautiful hair, Denis
thought, in the whole world of womankind. Her hands were like her
uncle's; but they were more in place at the end of her young arms, and
looked infinitely soft and caressing. He remembered how her blue eyes
had shone upon him, full of anger, pity, and innocence. And the more
he dwelt on her perfections, the uglier death looked, and the more
deeply was he smitten with penitence at her continued tears. Now he
felt that no man could have the courage to leave a world which
contained so beautiful a creature; and now he would have given forty
minutes of his last hour to have unsaid his cruel speech.

Suddenly a hoarse and ragged peal of cockcrow rose to their ears from
the dark valley below the windows. And this shattering noise in the
silence of all around was like a light in a dark place, and shook them
both out of their reflections.

"Alas, can I do nothing to help you?" she said, looking up.

"Madam," replied Denis, with a fine irrelevancy, "if I have said
anything to wound you, believe me, it was for your own sake and not for
mine."

She thanked him with a tearful look.

"I feel your position cruelly," he went on. "The world has been bitter
hard on you. Your uncle is a disgrace to mankind. Believe me, madam,
there is no young gentleman in all France but would be glad of my
opportunity, to die in doing you a