“You beckoned me?” she asked.

“No, I did not.”

“Nevertheless, I come by your desire, I am sure.”

“Mademoiselle,” I said, “I am not in the custom of doing favors; I have forsworn them.  But before you return me my jewel, I risk my head and render one last one, and to you.”

“Do not, Monsieur, at such price,” she responded, with a slight mocking motion of her hand.

“Delphine! those resolves, last night, in the cellar, were daring; they were noble, yet they were useless.”

She had not started, but a slight tremor ran over her person and vanished while I spoke.

“They will be allowed to proceed no farther,—­the axe is sharpened; for the last man who adjusted his mask was a spy,—­was the Secretary of the Secret Service.”

Delphine could not have grown paler than was usual with her of late.  She flashed her eye upon me.

“He was, it may be, Monsieur himself,” she said.

“I do not claim the honor of that post.”

“But you were there, nevertheless,—­a spy!”

“Hush, Delphine!  It would be absurd to quarrel.  I was there for the recovery of this stone, having heard that it was in a cellar,—­which, stupidly enough, I had insisted should be a wine-cellar.”

“It was, then”——­

“In a salt-cellar,—­a blunder which, as you do not speak English, you cannot comprehend.  I never mix with treason, and did not wish to assist at your pastimes.  I speak now, that you may escape.”

“If Monsieur betrays his friends, the police, why should I expect a kinder fate?”

“When I use the police, they are my servants, not my friends.  I simply warn you, that, before sunrise, you will be safer travelling than sleeping,—­safer next week in Vienna than in Paris.”

“Thank you!  And the intelligence is the price of the diamond?  If I had not chanced to pick it up, my throat,” and she clasped it with her fingers, “had been no slenderer than the others?”

“Delphine, will you remember, should you have occasion to do so in Vienna, that it is just possible for an Englishman to have affections, and sentiments, and, in fact, sensations? that, with him, friendship can be inviolate, and to betray it an impossibility?  And even were it not, I, Mademoiselle, have not the pleasure to be classed by you as a friend.”

“You err.  I esteem Monsieur highly.”

I was impressed by her coolness.

“Let me see if you comprehend the matter,” I demanded.

“Perfectly.  The arrest will be used to-night, the guillotine to-morrow.”

“You will take immediate measures for flight?”

“No,—­I do not see that life has value.  I shall be the debtor of him who takes it.”

“A large debt.  Delphine, I exact a promise of you.  I do not care to have endangered myself for nothing.  It is not worth while to make your mother unhappy.  Life is not yours to throw away.  I appeal to your magnanimity.”