batter down
the door.'

'You will give the torch fair play?' I said, noting its condition.

He assented; and thanking him sternly for this indulgence, I closed the
grille.

CHAPTER XXV. TERMS OF SURRENDER.

I still had my hand on the trap when a touch on the shoulder caused me
to turn, and in a moment apprised me of the imminence of a new peril; a
peril of such a kind that, summoning all my resolution, I could scarcely
hope to cope with it. Henry was at my elbow. He had taken of his mask,
and a single glance at his countenance warned me that that had happened
of which I had already felt some fear. The glitter of intense excitement
shone in his eyes. His face, darkly-flushed and wet with sweat, betrayed
overmastering emotion, while his teeth, tight clenched in the effort to
restrain the fit of trembling which possessed him, showed between his
lips like those of a corpse. The novelty of the danger which menaced
him, the absence of his gentlemen, and of all the familiar faces and
surroundings without which he never moved, the hour, the mean house,
and his isolation among strangers, had proved too much for nerves long
weakened by his course of living, and for a courage, proved indeed in
the field, but unequal to a sudden stress. Though he still strove to
preserve his dignity, it was alarmingly plain to my eyes that he was on
the point of losing, if he had not already lost, all self-command.

'Open!' he muttered between his teeth, pointing impatiently to the trap
with the hand with which he had already touched me. 'Open, I say, sir!'

I stared at him, startled and confounded. 'But your Majesty,' I ventured
to stammer, 'forgets that I have not yet--'

'Open, I say!' he repeated passionately. 'Do you hear me, sir? I desire
that this door be opened.' His lean hand shook as with the palsy, so
that the gems on it twinkled in the light and rattled as he spoke.

I looked helplessly from him to the women and back again, seeing in
a flash all the dangers which might follow from the discovery of his
presence there--dangers which I had not before formulated to myself, but
which seemed in a moment to range themselves with the utmost clearness
before my eyes. At the same time I saw what seemed to me to be a way of
escape; and emboldened by the one and the other, I kept my hand on the
trap and strove to parley with him.

'Nay, but, sire,' I said hurriedly, yet still with as much deference
as I could command, 'I beg you to pe