Pale, pale as a stone, she was brought from her dungeon.  To all her lord’s savage interrogatories, her reply had been, “I am innocent.”  To his threats of death, her answer was, “You are my lord; my life is in your hands, to take or to give.”  How few are the wives, in our day, who show such angelic meekness!  It touched all hearts around her, save that of the implacable Barbazure!  Even the Lady Blanche, (Fatima’s cousin), whom he had promised to marry upon his faithless wife’s demise, besought for her kinswoman’s life, and a divorce; but Barbazure had vowed her death.

“Is there no pity, sir?” asked the chaplain who had attended her.

“No pity?” echoed the weeping serving-maid.

“Did I not aye say I would die for my lord?” said the gentle lady, and placed herself at the block.

Sir Raoul de Barbazure seized up the long ringlets of her raven hair.  “Now!” shouted he to the executioner, with a stamp of his foot—­“Now strike!”

The man (who knew his trade) advanced at once, and poised himself to deliver his blow:  and making his flashing sword sing in the air, with one irresistible, rapid stroke, it sheared clean off the head of the furious, the bloodthirsty, the implacable Baron de Barbazure!

Thus he fell a victim to his own jealousy:  and the agitation of the Lady Fatima may be imagined, when the executioner, flinging off his mask, knelt gracefully at her feet, and revealed to her the well-known features of Romane de Clos-Vougeot.

LORDS AND LIVERIES.

By the authoress of “Dukes and dejeuners,” “Hearts and diamonds,” “Marchionesses and milliners,” Etc.  Etc.

I.

“CORBLEU!  What a lovely creature that was in the Fitzbattleaxe box to-night,” said one of a group of young dandies who were leaning over the velvet-cushioned balconies of the “Coventry Club,” smoking their full-flavored Cubas (from Hudson’s) after the opera.

Everybody stared at such an exclamation of enthusiasm from the lips of the young Earl of Bagnigge, who was never heard to admire anything except a coulis de dindonneau a la St. Menehould, or a supreme de cochon en torticolis a la Piffarde; such as Champollion, the chef of the “Traveller’s,” only knows how to dress; or the bouquet of a flask of Medoc, of Carbonell’s best quality; or a goutte of Marasquin, from the cellars of Briggs and Hobson.