Chapter 12 - Page 2

without weapons--and even if you had them, there is a guard-house within hail on one side of you, and the tribunal on the other. Escape from this room is impossible," answered Lomaque.

"Impossible!" repeated the other, furiously. "You traitor! you coward! can you look at her sitting there helpless, her very life ebbing away already with every minute that passes, and tell me coolly that escape is impossible?"

In the frenzy of his grief and despair, he lifted his disengaged hand threateningly while he spoke. Lomaque caught him by the wrist, and drew him toward a window open at the top.

"You are not in your right senses," said the chief agent, firmly; "anxiety and apprehension on your sister's account have shaken your mind. Try to compose yourself, and listen to me. I have something important to say--" (Trudaine looked at him incredulously.) "Important," continued Lomaque, "as affecting your sister's interests at this terrible crisis."

That last appeal had an instantaneous effect. Trudaine's outstretched hand dropped to his side, and a sudden change passed over his expression.

"Give me a moment," he said, faintly; and turning away, leaned against the wall and pressed his burning forehead on the chill, damp stone. He did not raise his head again till he had mastered himself, and could say quietly, "Speak; I am fit to hear you, and sufficiently in my senses to ask your forgiveness for what I said just now."

"When I left the tribunal and entered this room," Lomaque began in a whisper, "there was no thought in my mind that could be turned to good account, either for your sister or for you. I was fit for nothing but to deplore the failure of the confession which I came to St. Lazare to suggest to you as your best plan of defense. Since then, an idea has struck me, which may be useful--an idea so desperate, so uncertain--involving a proposal so absolutely dependent, as to its successful execution, on the merest chance, that I refuse to confide it to you except on one condition."

"Mention the condition! I submit to it before hand."

"Give me your word of honor that you will not mention what I am about to say to your sister until I grant you permission to speak. Promise me that when you see her shrinking before the terrors of death to-night, you will have self-restraint enough to abstain from breathing a word of hope to her. I ask this, because there are ten--twenty--fifty chances to one that there is no hope."

"I have no choice but to promise," answered Trudaine.

Lomaque produced his pocket-book and pencil before he spoke again.

"I will enter into particulars as soon as I have asked a strange question of you," he said. "You have been a great experimenter in chemistry in your time--is your mind