looks back with tearful longing when the driver hurries on his
horses as they pass into the open country. But she has no right to
wait on her own pleasure,--to verify her parents' calculations when
they talk together, by the fireside in Foray, of her journeying
through Fatherland.

No,--each sunrise appoints him one more day of imprisonment and exile!
Every sunset leaves him to one more night of cruel dreams which
morning shall deride! And while this can be said, what has Chalons,
or any other spot on earth, that it should lure her into rest?

The higher powers sometimes convey their messages and do their work
after a prosaic fashion. It was no uncommon thing for a young girl
in neat raiment to stand waiting admittance before the door of the
Château Desperiers. Hospitality was called upon in those days not so
often, perhaps, as benevolence; and for its charity the chateau had
a reputation far and wide; the expectation of the poor perished only
in fruition there.

Into the library of this ancient mansion Elizabeth Montier was
ushered by the old gray servant. There she might wait the return of
his mistress; at what hour the return should be anticipated he could
not undertake to say. His counsel to the stranger was, that she had
better return at a later hour; but when Elizabeth said it was
impossible, that she had come from a great distance to see the lady
of the place, and must await her return _there_, he led her without
further parley to the library, and left her.

And from its lofty windows, at her leisure, she might now look down
upon the prospect Prisoner Manuel had described. When she crossed