Through the massive oaken door, clamped with polished steel bands, entered now two pallid and haggard persons--a man and a woman. The light striking on their eyes made them blink and look aside. The man led the woman to the fire, and seated her upon a low chair; and taking a blue satin coverlid from the bed in the recess, he folded it tenderly round her shoulders. She scarcely seemed to notice where she was, or what was being done; she sat with her eyes and face fixed, shivering now and then, and with her mind apparently preoccupied with some ugly recollection. The man then went to the table and poured out a glass of wine, and held it to the woman's lips, and after a little resistance she drank some of it. "You are as safe here," said he, "as if you were in an island of the South Sea. I will see that you want for nothing while you have to remain here." "What is the use?" she asked, with a kind of apathetic peevishness. "Before long we shall be able to go away," he continued. "My darling, don't be disheartened. All our happiness is to come." "I can never forget it," she said, with a shiver. "What is the use? I can never get away from him now. Do you think the water is frozen yet?" "You must not think of that at all. When you are warm, and have drunk some wine, you will not feel this nervousness. Nothing has been done that is worth regretting, or that could have been helped. Kate, I love you more than ever." "What is the use?" she repeated, in a dull tone. "It was not worth while." There was a pause. "I must leave you for a few minutes," he said gently. "It is necessary that I should show myself to Lady Malmaison and to the servants. No one knows that I have left the house. By the time I come back you will have got warm, and we will sup together. Don't be downhearted, my darling." He bent forward to kiss her. With a sudden gesture of aversion she pushed him back. "There is blood upon your forehead!" she said, in a sharp whisper. "Only a scratch--I had forgotten it," he answered, trying to smile. "Well, then, in half an hour, at the utmost, we will meet again."