"No, no," the other replied, "never. And he is not dead, nor like to die. I am, indeed, far more likely to die than he--since the doctors all say I am far from strong, though I do not perceive it." "But what will you do?" again asked the practical hostess. "How live? Mr. Fane has, you say, no longer sufficient youth or activity to earn a living for you at the fence school--can you, dear, earn enough for both?" "I think so," Kate replied, "by returning to Paris. That we must do--there is nothing to be earned here. But, in Paris, Archibald Sholto has much influence in the court circles; he knows even the King and--and--the new favourite, La Pompadour, who has deposed Madame de Chateauroux. Also he is a friend of Cardinal Tencin, who owes much to the exiled Stuarts. It is, he thinks, certain that some place either at the court, or in the prince's household--if he has escaped from Scotland, which God grant!--or in the Chevalier St. George's, at Rome, might be found for me--a place which would enable me to keep my old father from want for the rest of his life." "Kate, you are a brave woman, and a good one, too, for from what you have told me your father himself has behaved none too well to you, and----" "I must forget that," the other replied, "and remember only how for years he struggled hard to keep a home for us, to bring me up as a lady. I must put away every thought of his one wrong to me and remember only all that he has done for my good." Meanwhile Kate's determination to part from her husband--if, as no one doubted, he it was who had endeavoured to betray the others to the Government--was well known to her three friends; and therefore, with them as with her and her father, preparations were being hurried on by which they also might return to France. For them there was, as there had been before the invasion of Scotland and England, the means whereby to exist; Douglas and Bertie had not sacrificed their commissions in the French regiments to which they belonged, and Archibald was employed by the Stuart cause as an agent, was also a member of the College of St. Omer, and was a priest of St. Eustache. That Bertie Elphinston would ever have left London while his kinsman and the head of his house, Arthur, Lord Balmerino, lay in the Tower awaiting his trial and certain death was not to be supposed, had not a message come from that unhappy nobleman ordering him to go. Also, he bade him waste no time in remaining where he was hourly in danger and could, at the same time, be of no earthly good.