“I can’t stop to tell you now; but we shall most likely meet again to-day. I expect to be at the prison this afternoon. Shall I ask for you? Good! I won’t forget!” With those farewell words he went out, and never so much as looked back at the prisoners before he closed the door. Trudaine returned to his sister, fearful lest his face should betray what had passed during the extraordinary interview between Lomaque and himself. But, whatever change there might be in his expression, Rose did not seem to notice it. She was still strangely inattentive to all outward things. That spirit of resignation, which is the courage of women in all great emergencies, seemed now to be the one animating spirit that fed the flame of life within her. When her brother sat down by her, she only took his hand gently and said: “Let us stop together like this, Louis, till the time comes. I am not afraid of it, for I have nothing but you to make me love life, and you, too, are going to die. Do you remember the time when I used to grieve that I had never had a child to be some comfort to me? I was thinking, a moment ago, how terrible it would have been now, if my wish had been granted. It is a blessing for me, in this great misery, that I am childless. Let us talk of old days, Louis, as long as we can--not of my husband; or my marriage--only of the old times, before I was a burden and a trouble to you.” CHAPTER V. The day wore on. By ones and twos and threes at a time, the condemned prisoners came from the tribunal, and collected in the waiting-room. At two o’clock all was ready for the calling over of the death-list. It was read and verified by an officer of the court; and then the jailer took his prisoners back to St. Lazare. Evening came. The prisoners’ meal had been served; the duplicate of the death-list had been read in public at the grate; the cell doors were all locked. From the day of their arrest, Rose and her brother, partly through the influence of a bribe, partly through Lomaque’s intercession, had been confined together in one cell; and together they now awaited the dread event of the morrow. To Rose that event was death--death, to the thought of which, at least, she was now resigned. To Trudaine the fast-nearing future was darkening hour by hour, with the uncertainty which is worse than death; with the faint, fearful, unpartaken suspense, which keeps the mind ever on the rack, and wears away the heart slowly. Through the long unsolaced agony of that dreadful night, but one relief came to him. The tension of every nerve, the crushing weight of the one fatal oppression that clung to every thought, relaxed a little when Rose’s bodily powers began to sink under her mental exhaustion--when her sad, dying talk of the happy times that were passed ceased softly, and she laid her head on his shoulder, and let the angel of slumber take her yet for a little while, even though she lay already under the shadow of the angel of death.