“Where is Pierre?” miladi asked.

“Pierre was making himself ready to attend monsieur to England.”

Scarcely had she closed the door upon herself and the tray when Sir Francis Levison appeared, equipped for traveling.  “Good-bye, Isabel,” said he, without further circumlocution or ceremony.

Lady Isabel, excited beyond all self-control, slipped the bolt of the door; and, half leaning against it, half leaning at his feet, held up her hand in supplication.

“Francis, have you any consideration left for me—­any in the world?”

“How can you be so alarmed, Isabel?  Of course I have,” he continued, in a peevish, though kind tone, as he took hold of her hands to raise her.

“No, not yet.  I will remain here until you say you will wait another day or two.  You know that the French Protestant minister is prepared to marry us the instant news of the divorce shall arrive; if you do care still for me, you will wait.”

“I cannot wait,” he replied, his tone changing to one of determination.  “It is useless to urge it.”

He broke from her and left the room, and in another minute had left the house, Pierre attending him.  A feeling, amounting to a conviction, rushed over the unhappy lady that she had seen him for the last time until it was too late.

She was right.  It was too late by weeks and months.

December came in.  The Alps were covered with snow; Grenoble borrowed the shade, and looked cold, and white, and sleety, and sloppy; the gutters, running through the middle of certain of the streets, were unusually black, and the people crept along especially dismal.  Close to the fire in the barn of a French bedroom, full of windows, and doors, and draughts, with its wide hearth and its wide chimney, into which we could put four or five of our English ones, shivered Lady Isabel Vane.  She had an invalid cap on, and a thick woolen invalid shawl, and she shook and shivered perpetually; though she had drawn so close to the wood fire that there was a danger of her petticoats igniting, and the attendant had frequently to spring up and interpose between them and the crackling logs.  Little did it seem to matter to Lady Isabel; she sat in one position, her countenance the picture of stony despair.

So had she sat, so looking, since she began to get better.  She had had a long illness, terminating in a low fever; but the attendants whispered among themselves that miladi would soon get about if she would only rouse herself.  She had got so far about as to sit up in the windy chamber; and it seemed to be to her a matter of perfect indifference whether she ever got out of it.

This day she had partaken of her early dinner—­such as it was, for her appetite failed—­and had dozed asleep in the arm chair, when a noise arose from below, like a carriage driving into the courtyard through the porte cochere.  It instantly aroused her.  Had he come?