Part 40 (2/2)

”Surely you can persuade Sir Percy's friends not to leave their chief in durance vile They themselves could put an end to his troubles to- up the Dauphin to you, you mean?” she retorted coldly

”Precisely”

”And you hoped--you still hope that by placing before ainst my husband you will induce me to act the part of a traitor towards him and a coward before his followers?”

”Oh!” he said deprecatingly, ”the cruelty now is no longer mine

Sir Percy's release is in your hands, Lady Blakeney--in that of his followers I should only be too willing to end the present intolerable situation You and your friends are applying the last turn of the thumbscrew, not I--”

She smothered the cry of horror that had risen to her lips Theto make a breach in her arer trust herself to speak, but ed his shoulders as if the matter were now entirely out of his control Then he opened the door for her to pass out, and as her skirts brushed against hi a cordial ”Good-night!”

”And remember, Lady Blakeney,” he added politely, ”that should you at any time desire to communicate with me at my rooms, 19, Rue Dupuy, I hold raceful figure disappeared in the outside gloom he passed his thin hand over his ns of triumphant irony:

”The second visit onders, I think, my fine lady,” he murmured under his breath

CHAPTER xxxI AN INTERLUDE

It was close on ht now, and still they sat opposite one another, he the friend and she the wife, talking over that brief half-hour that had uerite had tried to tell Sir Andrew everything; bitter as it was to put into actual words the pathos andfrom the devoted comrade whom she knew Percy would trust absolutely To him she repeated every word that Percy had uttered, described every inflection of his voice, those enigether they cheated one another into the belief that hope lingered so to despair, Lady Blakeney,” said Sir Andrew fir to disobey I would stake my life that even now Blakeney has some scheme in his iven you, and which--Heaven help us in that case!--we ht thwart by disobedience Tomorrow in the late afternoon I will escort you to the Rue de Charonne It is a house that we all knoell, and which Armand, of course, knows too I had already inquired there two days ago to ascertain whether by chance St Just was not in hiding there, but Lucas, the landlord and old-clothes dealer, knew nothing about hiuerite told him about her swift vision of Armand in the dark corridor of the house of Justice

”Can you understand it, Sir Andrew?” she asked, fixing her deep, luly upon him

”No, I cannot,” he said, after an almost imperceptible moment of hesitancy; ”but we shall see hie will knohere to find him; and now that we knohere she is, all our anxiety about him, at any rate, should soon be at an end”

He rose and made some allusion to the lateness of the hour So to hide his innerhts froaze

”Can you understand it all, Sir Andrew?” she reiterated with a pathetic note of appeal

”No, no!” he said firmly ”On my soul, Lady Blakeney, I know no more of Arht The boy frets because remorse must have assailed him by now Had he but obeyed implicitly that day, as we all did--”

But he could not frame the whole terrible proposition in words Bitterly as he himself felt on the subject of Armand, he would not add yet another burden to this devoted woman's heavy load of misery

”It was Fate, Lady Blakeney,” he said after a while ”Fate! a damnable fate which did it all Great God! to think of Blakeney in the hands of those brutes see were a night his h this room”