signed-with Robspierre's initials—M. R.—
formed elegantly in cyphers:—

"Arrest Trudaine and his sister to-night.
On second thoughts, I am not sure, if Danville
comes back in time to be present, that it may
not be all the better. He is unprepared for
his wife's arrest. Watch him closely when it
takes place, and report privately to me. I am
afraid he is a vicious man; and of all things
I abhor Vice."

"Any more work for me to-night?" asked
Magloire with a yawn.

"Only an arrest," replied Lomaque.
"Collect our men, and when you're ready, get a
coach at the door."

"We were just going to supper," grumbled
Magloire to himself, as he went out. "The
devil seize the Aristocrats! They're all in
such a hurry to get to the Guillotine that
they won't even give a man time to eat his
victuals in peace!"

"There's no choice now," muttered Lomaque,
angrily thrusting the arrest-order and the
three-cornered note into his pocket. "His
father was the saving of me; he himself
welcomed me like an equal; his sister treated me
like a gentleman, as the phrase went in those
days; and now—"

He stopped and wiped his forehead—then
unlocked his desk, produced a bottle of brandy,
and poured himself out a glass of the liquor,
which he drank by sips, slowly.

"I wonder whether other men get softer-
hearted as they grow older?" he said. "I
seem to do so at any rate. Courage! courage!
what must be, must. If I risked my head to
do it, I couldn't stop this arrest. There
isn't a man in the office who wouldn't be
ready to execute it, if I wasn't."

Here the rumble of carriage-wheels sounded
outside.

"There's the coach!" exclaimed Lomaque,
locking up the brandy-bottle, and taking his
hat. "After all, as this arrest is to be
made, it's as well for them that I should
make it."

Consoling himself as he best could with this
reflection, Chief Police-Agent Lomaque blew
out the candles, and quitted the room.

CHAPTER III.

IGNORANT of the change in her husband's
plans, which was to bring him back to Paris
a day before the time that had been fixed for
his return, Sister Rose had left her solitary
home to spend the evening with her brother.
They had sat talking together long after
sunset, and had let the darkness steal on them
insensibly, as people will who are only
occupied with quiet, familiar conversation. Thus
it happened, by a curious coincidence, that
just as Lomaque was blowing out his candles
at the office, Rose was lighting the reading-
lamp at her brother's lodgings.

Five years of disappointment and sorrow
had sadly changed her to outward view. Her
face looked thinner and longer; the once
delicate red and white of her complexion was
gone; her figure had wasted under the
influence of some weakness which already made
her stoop a little when she walked. Her
manner had lost its maiden shyness only to
become unnaturally quiet and subdued. Of
all the charms which had so fatally, yet so
innocently, allured her heartless husband, but
one remained—the winning gentleness of her
voice. It might be touched now and then
with a note of sadness; but the soft attraction
of its even, natural tone still remained.
In the marring of all other harmonies, this
one harmony had been preserved unchanged!
Her brother—though his face was care-worn,
and his manner sadder than of old, looked
less altered from his former self. It is the
most fragile material which soonest shows
the flaw. The world's idol, Beauty, holds its
frailest tenure of existence in the one Temple
where we most love to worship it.

"And so you think, Louis, that our perilous
undertaking has really ended well by this
time?" said Rose, anxiously, as she lit the
lamp and placed the glass shade over it.
"What a relief it is only to hear you say you
think we have succeeded at last!"

"I said I hoped, Rose," replied her brother.

"Well, even hoped is a great word from
you, Louis—a great word from any one in this
fearful city, and in these days of Terror."

She stopped suddenly, seeing her brother
raise his hand in warning. They looked at each
other in silence, and listened. The sound of
footsteps going slowly past the house—ceasing for
a moment just beyond it—then going on again
—came through the open window. There
was nothing else, out of doors or in, to disturb
the silence of the night—the deadly silence of
Terror which, for months past, had hung over
Paris. It was a significant sign of the times,
that even a passing footstep, sounding a little
strangely at night, was subject for suspicion,
both to brother and sister—so common a
subject that they suspended their conversation as
a matter of course, without exchanging a
word of explanation, until the tramp of the
strange footsteps had died away.

"Louis," continued Rose, dropping her
voice to a whisper, after nothing more was
audible, "when may I trust our secret to my
husband?"

"Not yet!" rejoined Trudaine earnestly.
"Not a word, not a hint of it, till I give you
leave. Remember, Rose, you promised silence
from the first. Everything depends on your
holding that promise sacred till I release you
from it."

"I will hold it sacred; I will, indeed, at all
hazards, under all provocations," she
answered.

"That is quite enough to reassure me—
and now, love, let us change the subject.
Even these walls may have ears, and the
closed door yonder may be no protection."
He looked towards it uneasily while he spoke.