Three days had passed, and yet to Ville Marie, waiting in anxiety, no news had come. M. de Valrenne had promised to send a messenger directly he could secure any tidings of the enemy’s movements, and many regarded this prolonged silence as ominous of disaster. The night of the third day was oppressively warm; the landscape lay wrapped in a soft incense-breathing obscurity. The feverish excitement tingling in Diane de Monesthrol’s veins drove away all thought of sleep. Suspense imparted an unnatural keenness to all her faculties, imagination was stimulated to the highest point, fears and fancies thronged her excited brain. Her pulses leapt with a prescient thrill of some blow about to fall. She was convinced that a supreme crisis had arrived, the endurance of which would tax her strength to the utmost. It seemed as though, in the midst of her gay and fearless career, she had been caught in the gigantic iron hand of a ruthless Fate that could not fail to crush her. Suddenly her whole being seemed to contract and shiver, with a nameless agony of apprehension. She could no longer endure the house, which seemed to stifle her; perhaps the cool night air might relieve this overpowering horror. Breathless, trembling, she rushed out into the garden. Over Mount Royal the moon was shining in a cloudless sky, its sheen lighting up the tin roof of Notre Dame until it shone like silver, illuminating the dark foliage of the quaint garden, and driving its lances of pearly light through the close-woven branches. Beneath the shade a sort of mystic twilight prevailed; the dim trees rose in soft undulations half veiled in the faint and dreamy light. In the silent hush of nature the dew fell like a benediction; all the breathings of night were suggestive of peace and balm.