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Rh fears of the issue; my distress is that you have had to endure so much."

"But don't you know we women like such trials, Gerard, even if our hearts are not so stout to face them as yours? It is for you I fear—yet not fear; I have too much confidence in you. Besides, there is always a last resource."

"We are very far from any last resource," he answered cheerily. "But what is the one you have in mind?"

"It is I who am the cause of all, Gerard; and in the last extreme I could avert all ill even from you."

"We would die here in Malincourt one by one before that sacrifice could even be thought of, Gabrielle," he answered earnestly. "Do you think there is a man of us Bourbons who would purchase his life at such a price?"

"I would let no harm come to you," she answered, her tone as resolute as his.

"How you must love me," he whispered tenderly, taking her in his arms and kissing her. "You would suffer worse than death for me; but you shall do better than that, dearest, you shall live for me."

"Pray God it may be so; but this Governor is a hard enemy."

"And we Bourbons are no easy ones. But how sweet to me this thought of your infinite love." She smiled up to him and whispered with rueful self-reproach—

"Yet it could not spur my wits to remember what Lucette thought of on the instant."

"Lucette is not as my Gabrielle. Her heart is under the discipline of her judgment."

"And mine is all in all to me—all I have to live for; or so it seems almost. I cannot understand this sweet wild change in me. I am as one in a dream when I think of you, Gerard; self-centred, absorbed, self-lost. I had