ad loved him, indeed,
since that night at Boisvert, although she had stifled the very thought,
and hidden it even from herself, as being unworthy in one of her station
to love a man so lowly-born as Caron. But now, on the eve of his death,
the truth would no longer be denied. It cried, perchance, the louder by
virtue of the pusillanimity of the craven below stairs in whose place
Caron was to die; but anyhow, it cried so loudly that it overbore the
stern voice of the blood that had hitherto urged her to exclude the
sentiment from her heart. No account now did she take of any difference
in station. Be she nobler a thousand times, be he simpler a thousand
times, the fact remained that she was a woman, he a man, and beyond that
she did not seek to go.

Low indeed were the Lilies of France when a daughter of the race of
their upholders heeded them so little and the caste they symbolised.

Henriette came to her that afternoon, and, all ignorant of the sources
of her grief, she essayed to soothe and comfort her, in which, at last,
she succeeded.

In the evening Ombreval sent word that he wished to speak to her--and
that his need was urgent. But she returned him the answer that she would
see him in the morning. She was indisposed that evening, she added, in
apology.

And in the morning they met, as she had promised him. Both pale,
although from different causes, and both showing signs of having slept
but little. They broke their fast together and in silence, which at last
he ended by asking her whether the night had brought her reflection, and
whether such reflection had made her appreciate their position and the
need to set out at once.

"It needed no reflection to make me realise our position better than I
did yesterday," she answered. "I had hoped that it would have brought
you to a different frame of mind. But I am afraid that it has not done
so."

"I fail to see what change my frame of mind admits of," he answered
testily.

"Have you thought," she asked at last, and her voice was cold and
concentrated, "that this man is giving his life for you?"

"I have feared," he answered, with incredible callousness, "that to save
his craven skin he might elect to do differently at the last moment."

She looked at him in a mighty wonder, her dark eyes open to their
widest, and looking black by the extreme dilation of the pupils. So vast
was her amazement at this unbounded egotism that it almost overruled her
disgust.

"Yo