M. de Brevan had recommended her not to take her jewels.  She left them, therefore, with the exception of such as she wore every day, openly displayed on a chiffonnier.  The manner of her escape forbade her taking much baggage; and still some linen was indispensable.  Upon reflection it did not seem to her inexpedient to take a small carpet-bag, which her mother had given her, and which contained a dressing-case, all the articles in which were of solid gold and of marvellously fine workmanship.  When her preparations were complete, she wrote to her father a long letter, in which she explained fully the motives of her desperate resolution.

Then she waited.  Night had fallen long since; and the last preparations for a princely entertainment filled the palace with noise and movement.  She could hear the hasty steps of busy servants, the loud orders of butlers and stewards, the hammer of upholsterers who gave here and there a final touch.

Soon there came the rolling of wheels on the fine gravel in the court-yard, and the arrival of the first guests.

Henceforth it was for Henrietta only a question of minutes; and she counted them by her watch with a terrible beating of her heart.  At last the hands marked a quarter before ten.  Acting almost automatically, she rose, threw an immense cashmere shawl over her shoulders; and, taking her little bag in her hand, she escaped from her room, and slipped along the passages to the servants’ stairs.

She went on tiptoe, holding her breath, eye and ear on the watch, ready at the smallest noise to run back, or to rush into the first open room.  Thus she got down without difficulty, reached the dark hall at the foot of the staircase; and there in the shade, seated on her little bag, she waited, out of breath, her hair moist with a cold perspiration, her teeth clattering in her mouth from fear.  At last it struck ten o’clock; and the vibration of the bell could still be heard, when M. de Brevan’s coupe stopped at the door.

His coachman was certainly a skilful driver.  Pretending to have lost the control of his horse, he made it turn round, and forced it back with such admirable awkwardness, that the carriage came close up to the wall, and the right hand door was precisely in the face of the dark little hall in which Henrietta was standing.  As quick as lightning M. de Brevan jumped out.  Henrietta rushed forward.  Nobody saw any thing.

A moment later the carriage slowly drove out of the court-yard of the palace of Count Ville-Handry, and stopped at some little distance.

It was done.  In leaving her father’s house, Miss Ville-Handry had broken with all the established laws of society.  She was at the mercy now of what might follow; and, according as events might turn out favorable or unfavorable, she was saved or lost.  But she did not think of that.  As the danger of being surprised passed away, the feverish excitement that had kept her up so far, also subsided, and she was lying, undone, on the cushions, when the door suddenly opened, and a man appeared.  It was M. de Brevan.