terribly concerned--would arrive posthaste, wreak vengeance on those who had so nearly slain his child, bear away her and his grandchildren to safety.

Gabrielle locked herself in her bedroom, and wrote with feverish energy. The pen flew over the sheets and covered them with close writing that told a piteous tale. Toinon, who knew that in the absence of my lord, both abbé and governess had been persecuting her mistress, tried the door once or twice, and, receiving no response to her knocks, grew so seriously alarmed, that she dashed off in search of Jean Boulot, dreading some new catastrophe. Just as the latter appeared with a hatchet in his grasp, and anxious lines upon his brow, the door opened, and the chatelaine herself stood on the threshold holding a letter.

She was flushed with fever, but quite self-possessed. With a strange smile she beckoned them both in, and again turned the key in the lock.

"Something has happened, dear good friends, whom I can trust," she explained, rapidly. "Something so terrible, that I cannot tell it you. I am still scared and horrified, but Heaven permits me to retain my senses. Jean, for love of me and mine, you will saddle your horse and ride leisurely to Onzain, as though bent on ordinary business; and there engage with the Maître de Poste to send this letter by special courier. He must take no rest till he reaches Paris. Two precious souls--three--depend on punctual obedience. I may trust you, Jean? Let none suspect your mission."

Honest Jean sank on one knee and pressed the hot hand of the chatelaine to his lips with reverence. "My life is madame's," he said simply, and went.

"Embrace me, my Toinon," Gabrielle cried, falling on the neck of her foster-sister in a paroxysm of hysterical weeping. "I have been for years in a foolish day-dream. I am awake now to sleep no more."

Toinon was mystified, but could gather that the terrible emotion of the marquise relieved her pent feelings, and was as salutary as timely bleeding to the apoplectic. After a brief space she grew better, and could smile like a ghost of her old self. The die was cast. She would be relieved of nightmare. Her affection for her husband was burned quite away, and, as its ashes paled, her love for the little ones shot up the purer.

 

 

 

 

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