with the materials of a modest supper. "We must be our own domestics,"
she said with an attempt at lightness: but the attempt was hollow; a
cloud seemed to fill the low room, and press upon the inmates. The
_three_ sate down, but neither of the young people did much justice to
her hospitality. After supper she held a brief consultation with Alain;
and after giving him a bag of gold and a letter for her husband,
dismissed him, to rest if not to slumber, in the chamber that stood at
the head of the stair on which the door in the wainscot opened. Then she
and Marguerite retired by the other door to their own part of the upper
floor, where I fear the young lady received a lecture before she went to
her virgin couch.




ACT III.

THE STATES.


Next morning the Militia Captain left before the house was awake, to
return to Lempriere in London. When the ladies went, later in the
forenoon, to arrange the chamber in which he had passed the night, they
found that the bed had not been used during Le Gallais' occupation. A
copy of Ben Jonson's Poems lay on the table; by the side of which were
pen and ink, and a burnt-out candle. On opening the book, Mdlle. de St.
Martin found some lines written on the fly-leaf, which ran as follows:--

"What tho' the floures be riche and rare
of hue and fragrancie,