months before you can revisit Paris, or disclose our place of residence
to anyone: and our passports--arrange all that; in what names, and
whither, you please. And now, dear Richard" (she leaned her arm fondly
on my shoulder, and looked with ineffable passion in my eyes, with her
other hand clasped in mine), "my very life is in your hands; I have
staked all on your fidelity."

As she spoke the last word, she, on a sudden, grew deadly pale, and
gasped, "Good God! who is here?"

At the same moment she receded through the door in the marble screen,
close to which she stood, and behind which was a small roofless chamber,
as small as the shrine, the window of which was darkened by a clustering
mass of ivy so dense that hardly a gleam of light came through the
leaves.

I stood upon the threshold which she had just crossed, looking in the
direction in which she had thrown that one terrified glance. No wonder
she was frightened. Quite close upon us, not twenty yards away, and
approaching at a quick step, very distinctly lighted by the moon,
Colonel Gaillarde and his companion were coming. The shadow of the
cornice and a piece of wall were upon me. Unconscious of this, I was
expecting the moment when, with one of his frantic yells, he should
spring forward to assail me.

I made a step backward, drew one of my pistols from my pocket, and
cocked it. It was obvious he had not seen me.

I stood, with my finger on the trigger, determined to shoot him dead if
he should attempt to enter the place where the Countess was. It would,