a gentleman--my equal--my course would stand clearly
defined. I should not have hesitated a moment. But this canaille! Ma
foi! let me beg of you to come to your senses. The very thought is
unworthy in you."

"I understand you," she answered him, very coldly. "You use a coward's
arguments, and you have the effrontery to consider yourself a man of
honour--a nobleman. I no longer marvel that there is a revolution in
France."

She stood surveying him for a moment, then she quietly left the room. He
stared after her.

"Woman, woman!" he sighed, as he set down his napkin and rose in his
turn.

His humour was one of pitying patience for a girl that had not the
wit to see that to ask him--the most noble d'Ombreval--to die that La
Boulaye might live was very much like asking him to sacrifice his life
to save a dog's.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE CONCIERGERIE

It wanted but a few minutes to noon as the condemned of the day were
being brought out of the Conciergerie to take their places in the
waiting tumbrils. Fourteen they numbered, and there was a woman amongst
them as composed as any of the men. She descended the prison steps in
nonchalant conversation with a witty young man of some thirty years of
age, who had been one of the ornaments of the prerevolutionary salons.
Had the pair been on the point of mounting a wedding coach they could
not have shown themselves in better spirits.

Aristocrats, too, were the remaining twelve, with one exception, and if
they had not known how to live, at least they could set a very splendid
example of how to die. They came mostly in pairs, and the majority
of them emulating the first couple and treating the whole matter as
a pleasantry that rather bored them by the element of coarseness
introduced by the mob. One or two were pale, and their eyes wore a
furtive, frightened look. But they valiantly fought down their fears,
and for all that the hearts within them may have been sick with horror,
they contrived to twist a smile on to their pale lips. They did not lack
for stout patterns of high bearing, and in addition they had their own
arrogant pride--the pride that had brought them at last to this pass--to
sustain them in their extremity. Noblesse les obligeait. The rabble, the
canaille of the new regime, might do what they would with their bodies,
but their spirits they could not break, nor overcome their indomitable
pride. By the brave manner of their death it remained for them to make