“But that awful cough of yours!  Percy, you’ll do yourself an injury with it one day.”

“Not I!  I like that cough.  I practised it for a long time before I did it to perfection.  Such a splendid wheeze!  I must teach Tony to do it some day.  Would you like to hear it now?”

He laughed, that perfect, delightful, lazy laugh of his, which carried every hearer with it along the path of light-hearted merriment.  Then he broke into the awful cough of the consumptive Rateau.  And Esther Vincent instinctively closed her eyes and shuddered.

X

“Needs must—­”

I

The children were all huddled up together in one corner of the room.  Etienne and Valentine, the two eldest, had their arms round the little one.  As for Lucile, she would have told you herself that she felt just like a bird between two snakes—­terrified and fascinated—­oh! especially by that little man with the pale face and the light grey eyes and the slender white hands unstained by toil, one of which rested lightly upon the desk, and was only clenched now and then at a word or a look from the other man or from Lucile herself.

But Commissary Lebel just tried to browbeat her.  It was not difficult, for in truth she felt frightened enough already, with all this talk of “traitors” and that awful threat of the guillotine.

Lucile Clamette, however, would have remained splendidly loyal in spite of all these threats, if it had not been for the children.  She was little mother to them; for father was a cripple, with speech and mind already impaired by creeping paralysis, and maman had died when little Josephine was born.  And now those fiends threatened not only her, but Etienne who was not fourteen, and Valentine who was not much more than ten, with death, unless she—­Lucile—­broke the solemn word which she had given to M. le Marquis.  At first she had tried to deny all knowledge of M. le Marquis’ whereabouts.

“I can assure M. le Commissaire that I do not know,” she had persisted quietly, even though her heart was beating so rapidly in her bosom that she felt as if she must choke.

“Call me citizen Commissary,” Lebel had riposted curtly.  “I should take it as a proof that your aristocratic sentiments are not so deep-rooted as they appear to be.”

“Yes, citizen!” murmured Lucile, under her breath.

Then the other one, he with the pale eyes and the slender white hands, leaned forward over the desk, and the poor girl felt as if a mighty and unseen force was holding her tight, so tight that she could neither move, nor breathe, nor turn her gaze away from those pale, compelling eyes.  In the remote corner little Josephine was whimpering, and Etienne’s big, dark eyes were fixed bravely upon his eldest sister.

“There, there! little citizeness,” the awful man said, in a voice that sounded low and almost caressing, “there is nothing to be frightened of.  No one is going to hurt you or your little family.  We only want you to be reasonable.  You have promised to your former employer that you would never tell anyone of his whereabouts.  Well! we don’t ask you to tell us anything.