“Yes, and his, too.  My best friends.  Strange, if I could not!”

“Oh, I’m glad you said that, Jacqueline!”

“My best friends,” repeated Jacqueline,—­not merely to please Elsie.  Love had opened wide her heart,—­and Elsie, weak and foolish though she might be,—­Elsie, her old companion, her playmate, her fellow-laborer,—­Elsie, who should be to her a sister always, and share in her good-fortune,—­Elsie had honorable place there.

“Could anything have happened, Jacqueline?” said Elsie, trembling:  her tremulous voice betrayed it.

“Oh, I think not,” was the answer.

“But he is so fearless,—­he might have fallen into—­into trouble.”

“What have you heard, Elsie?”

This question was quietly asked, but it struck to the heart of the questioned girl.  Jacqueline suspected!—­and yet Jacqueline asked so calmly!  Jacqueline could hear it,—­and yet how could this be declared?

Her hesitation quickened what was hardly suspicion into a conviction.

“What have you heard?” Jacqueline again questioned,—­not so calmly as before; and yet it was quite calmly, even to the alarmed ear of Elsie Meril.

“They have arrested Victor, Jacqueline.”

“For heresy?”

“I heard it in the street.”

Jacqueline arose,—­she crossed the chamber,—­her hand was on the latch.  Instantly Elsie stood beside her.

“What will you do?  I must go with you, Jacqueline.”

“Where will you go?” said Jacqueline.

“With you.  Wait,—­what is it you will do?  Or,—­no matter, go on, I will follow you,—­and take the danger with you.”

“Is there danger?  For him there is! and there might be for you,—­but none for me.  Stay, Elsie.  Where shall I go, in truth?”

Yet she opened the door, and began to descend the stairs even while she spoke; and Elsie followed her.

First to the house of the wool-comber.  John was not at home,—­and his mother could tell them nothing, had heard nothing of the arrest of Victor.  Then to the place which Victor had pointed out to her as the home of Mazurier.  Mazurier likewise they failed to find.  Where, then, was the prison of Le Roy’s captivity?  That no man could tell them; so they came home to their lodging at length in the dark night, there to wait through endless-seeming hours for morning.

On the Sunday they had chosen for their wedding-day Mazurier brought word of Victor to Jacqueline,—­was really a messenger, as he announced himself, when she opened for him the door of her room in the fourth story of the great lodging-house.  He had come on that day with a message; but it was not in all things—­in little beside the love it was meant to prove—­the message Victor had desired to convey.  In want of more faithful, more trustworthy messenger, Le Roy sent word by this man of his arrest,—­and bade Jacqueline pray for him, and come to him, if that were possible.  He desired, he said, to serve his Master,—­and, of all things, sought the Truth.