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Rh "I guessed it, but could find no proof."

"And that she will be tried to-morrow?"

"They never keep a prisoner pining too long," replied Déroulède bitterly. "I guessed that too."

"What do you mean to do?"

"Defend her with the last breath in my body."

"You love her still, then?" asked Blakeney, with a smile.

"Still?" The look, the accent, the agony of a hopeless passion conveyed in that one word, told Sir Percy Blakeney all that he wished to know.

"Yet she betrayed you," he said tentatively.

"And to atone for that sin—an oath, mind you, friend, sworn to her father—she is ready to give her life for me."

"And you are prepared to forgive?"

"To understand is to forgive," rejoined Déroulède simply, "and I love her."

"Your madonna!" said Blakeney, with a gently ironical smile.

"No; the woman I love, with all her weaknesses, all her sins; the woman to gain whom I would give my soul, to save whom I will give my life."

"And she?"

"She does not love me—would she have betrayed me else?"