A hideous smile flitted across the face of de Ploermel, as he cast himself heavily into an arm-chair, opposite to the door of the cupboard in which St. Renan was concealed, and taking up a silver bell which stood on the table, rung it repeatedly and loudly for a servant. "Bring wine," he said, as the man entered. "And, hark you, the masons are at work in the great hall, and have left their tools and materials for building. Let half a dozen of the grooms come up hither, and bring with them brick and mortar. I hate the sight of that cupboard, and before I sleep this night, it shall be built up solid with a good wall of mason-work; and so here's a health to the rats within it, and a long life to them!" and he quaffed off the wine in fiendish triumph. He spoke so loud, and that intentionally, that Raoul heard every word that he uttered. But if he hoped thereby to terrify the lover into discovering himself, and so convicting his fair and innocent wife, the villain was deceived. Raoul heard every word--knew his fate--knew that one word, one motion would have saved him; but that one word, one motion would have destroyed the fair fame of his Melanie. The memory of the death of that unhappy Lord of Kerguelen came palpably upon his mind in that dread moment, and the comments of his dead father. "I, at least," he muttered, between his hard set teeth, "I at least, will not be evidence against her. I will die silent--_fiel a la muerte_!" And when the brick and mortar were piled by the hands of the unconscious grooms, and when the fatal trowels clanged and jarred around him, he spake not--stirred not--gave no sign. Even the savage wretch, de Ploermel, unable to believe in the existence of such chivalry, such honor, half doubted if he were not deceived, and the cupboard were not untenanted by the true victim. Higher and higher rose the wall before the oaken door; and by the exclusion of the light of the many torches by which the men were working, the victim must have marked, inch by inch, the progress of his living immersement. The page, Jules, had climbed in silence to the window's ledge, and was looking in, an unseen spectator, for he had heard all that passed from without, and suspected his lord's presence in the fatal precinct. But as he saw the wall rise higher--higher--as he saw the last brick fastened in its place solid, immovable from within, and that without strife or opposition, he doubted not but that there was some concealed exit by which St. Renan had escaped, and he descended hastily and hurried homeward. Now came the lady's trial--the trial that shall prove to de Ploermel whether his vengeance was complete. She was led in with Rose, a prisoner. _Lettres de cachet_ had been obtained, when the treason of some wretched subordinate had revealed the secret of her intended flight with Raoul; and the officers had seized the wife by the connivance of the shameless husband.