"Did you ever hear how or why you were arrested?" "Once, and once only--I was told--I was told that it was on the authority of a _lettre de cachet_, filled up by King Louis in the name of the Comte de Montmorin." "It is an infamous falsehood!" exclaimed the count, passionately. "Perhaps so," sighed White, meekly; "the man who told me so has been dead twenty-three years." "And this arrest was"-- "On the anniversary of Ticonderoga--the night of the 15th of July, 1761." "The 15th of July!" exclaimed the countess, wildly, and in a piercing voice; "on the morning of that very day my desk was rifled of your letters, and your miniature, Adam White!--O my friend--I see it all--I see this horrible mystery!" White turned his hollow eyes and haggard visage towards her in wonder. He passed a hand repeatedly across his eyes, as if to clear his thoughts, then shook his white head, and relapsed into dreamy vacancy. After a painful pause, "That voice," said he, "is like one which used to come to me often--very often--in the Bastille; in my dreams it used to mingle with the rustle of the straw I slept on." He smiled with so ghastly an expression that the Duke of Dorset grew pale with anger and compassion. He had gleaned from White the story of his life, and discovered in a moment that the countess was the Lucy Fleming of his early love; and that the count, on discovering the wounded and long-missing major to be in Paris in 1761, to preclude all chance of the lovers ever meeting again, had consigned him to the Bastille, there to be detained for life, as it was termed "IN SECRET." "Monseigneur," said he, sternly, "I see a clue to this dark story; and believe me, that the king, whom I have the honour to represent, will take sure vengeance for this act of more than Italian jealousy, and for an atrocity which cannot be surpassed in the annals of yonder accursed edifice, which the mob of yesterday have happily hurled to the earth." With these words he retired, taking with him Adam White, who seemed reduced to mere childhood, for recollection and animation came upon him only by gleams and at unexpected times. As they withdrew, the countess turned away in horror from her husband, and fainted in the arms of her terrified daughters.