he 'Monsieur Louis'--le Dédaigneux as he is sometimes called, will see that you attain."
"It is impossible," the girl whispered. "Impossible. What I wish for he cannot give, not possessing it himself."
"Be not so sure. He is young, passionate, and, though many a silken thread has held him lightly for a time----"
"I have no silken thread wherewith to bind him," Emérance said, her eyes cast down, her breast heaving painfully. "Nor do I desire any other woman's--women's----"
"You do not understand, Emérance," La Truaumont said very gently. "Much as trouble and sorrow have taught you, you have not yet learnt all the secrets of a man's heart. A silken thread!" he went on, turning his back still more on the others so that, while they could not hear his words, neither should they see the movement of his lips, which movement, on occasions, will sometimes tell as much as words themselves. "A silken thread! What species of cord, of thong is that to hold a strong, reckless man? A thing befitting the place where it is most often found--a lady's boudoir, her bower, the seat in a tower window; a gilded chamber where carpets from Smyrna, skins, rugs, make all soft to the feet; the plaything of a rêveuse, a love-lorn dame."
"Well?" Emérance whispered, lifting her eyes to the other. "Well?"
"But there are other cords," La Truaumont went on. "The heart-strings of women to whom dalliance is unknown: women who will starve, intrigue, follow, dare all for him they love: who will bravely bear the cords, the threads that make them regard the block, the gibbet, as a sweeter thing than bowers and tapestry and silken hangings--so long as block or gibbet are risked with him they love."
"Ah!" the woman gasped in an indrawn breath.
"What does he want now with women in their great saloons, their oratories, their boudoirs? Is he not risking his life upon one cast; does he not therefore want women as well as men of action to help him, women who will keep steady before their eyes, even as he keeps, as all of us keep before our eyes, the diadem of France, the throne of France--France itself, on one side? As also he keeps, and we keep before our eyes, the scaffold outside the Bastille, the Wheel at the Cross Roads, the Gibbet--on the other side? And for such a woman will there be no reward, no acknowledgment?"
"Alas!" the unhappy creature murmured. "He is De Beaurepaire. I am--what?"
"A sorely tried, a deeply injured woman, a lady. One evilly, wickedly, entreated by the land she now hopes to aid. One who loves De Beaurepaire," he added softly.
"Heaven knows how much," the other whispered. "That only!"
"To-night the Prince will speak with you," La Truaumont continued. "To-night he will show to you the absolute faith and belief he will put in your loyalty to him and his cause, which is yours and mine and that of all Normans. Emérance, to-night he will confide in you a great task; he will put himself, his life, his honour, the honour of his house in your hands; he will place in your hands the chance of sending him to that wheel, that gibbet I spoke of but now. Does a man trust any woman with his honour and his life unless he knows that they are so safe in her hands, that they are so bound up with her own life and honour, that she needs must guard them safely?"
"Briefly," the woman said, her eyes raised for a moment to those of La Truaumont, "he knows I love him. Alas! the shame that any man should know I have given him my love unasked and unrequited."
"How can he fail to know? Yes, he does know. But you, Emérance, do you not know something on your part of how love and, above all, fidelity, begets love in return?"
* * * * *
The three men, La Truaumont, Fleur de Mai and Boisfleury had gone, they having taken the precaution to separate and make their way by different routes towards the better part of the city. Van den Enden and De Beaurepaire were in another room concluding their last arrangements for communicating with each other when the former should have reached Brussels. And Emérance leant out of the window of the room in which the meeting had been held and inhaled such air as was to be obtained from the stuffy street that was little better than an alley.
Yet it was not only for the sake of inhaling the air of the warm summer night that she leant over the sill while idly toying with a flower that grew, or half-grew and half-withered away, in an imitation Nevers flowerpot, but also for the sake of gaining time to collect and, afterwards, arrange her thoughts.
For she knew that, if La Truaumont's words meant anything at all, to-night would be fateful to her. She knew that, ere the bell of Saint Eustache, which had but a moment or so ago struck ten, should strike another hour, De Beaurepaire would have confided to her some task which, while it raised her from the almost degraded position of a spy--from the hateful task of watching Norman gentlemen and noblemen in Paris to discover if there was any defection on their part from that which they were deeply sworn to assist in--would not only put his life in her hands, but also jeopardise her own.
Nevertheless--as still she trifled with the flower while meditating deeply--not one of these three things, her own advancement to a position of trust and importance, or the power over De Beaurepaire's life and honour which that position would put in her hands, or--and this was, or would have been with many women, the greatest of all--the deadly peril in which she herself must stand henceforth, weighed with her in comparison with a fourth. In comparison with the fact that, henceforth, no matter whether the Great Attempt succeeded or failed--as it would most probably do--she and De Beaurepaire must for ever be associated together. For, if it failed, there could be but one fate for them to share together: if it, by any chance, succeeded, some little part of the success must fall to her share.
That, that only, was all she desired while knowing well there could be nothing more. She had herself uttered the words to La Truaumont that told all. The man she loved was De Beaurepaire, and he was far, far above her; as high above her as the eagle soaring in the skies is above the field-mouse; while, if the success were achieved, he would be as much more above her as the sun in its mid-day splendour is above the eagle. But, still--still--she would have played her part, she would have helped him to that splendour he had attained, she could never afterwards be forgotten or put entirely aside.
"To some women's hearts," she whispered now, "a recollection, the shadow of a memory, is all that they may dare to crave, all they can hope for. Happy are some women to obtain so much as that. If I can help him to succeed it will be enough. It is not much, yet, for me, it must suffice."
Then, as thus she mused, she heard the door open behind her, she heard a step taken into the room and, next, the voice of De Beaurepaire say, "Madame, I am here to speak with you."
CHAPTER IV
When first Georges, Sieur de la Truaumont, of an ancient Norman family, late a captain of "La Garde de Monsieur" and formerly of the Regiment de Roncherolles, had broached to the Prince Chevalier de Beaurepaire the suggestion that he should place himself at the head of the Norman plot for deposing King Louis, he had also indicated to him a number of persons of whom he might make use.
Passing over the greatest, since they were all known to the Prince and were also resident in Normandy, he had described to his half-friend and half-employer more than one who would be useful in Paris, and, among them, was Emérance, who styled herself the Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville.
"Who and what is she?" De Beaurepaire had asked almost indifferently, while wondering how a woman who lived in a decayed, though once fashionable, quarter of Paris and was reported by La Truaumont to be in an almost penniless condition, could be of the slightest
