People talk of blushing like a rose,--a very bad figure indeed. Roses do not blush. Their gentle color knows no sudden change. The soft emotion of the heart which sends the tell-tale blood into the cheek they never feel, but, as an image of eternal health, keep the same hue unchanged. No: Lucette blushed like the morning sky when, conscious of the coming of the sun, the whole face of heaven grows rosy and more rosy. "May I ask you, sir," continued the secretary, "if you are married to this young lady? is she your wife? is she your sister?" "Neither, sir," replied Edward,--"neither as yet. She may be some day my wife: till then she is to me as a sister. But, Monsieur Tronson, if I am to submit to interrogatories at all, I should prefer that they be put by his Eminence the cardinal himself." "One more, and I have done," said the secretary. "How happens it that you two have been so long on the road? Could you find no means of coming to Nantes sooner?" "If you know the time we have spent on the road, sir," replied Edward, "you should know likewise that Mademoiselle de Mirepoix's illness detained us." "Mademoiselle de Mirepoix!" said De Tronson, with an air of surprise: "this is altogether a somewhat strange affair. But, as you say, it will be better all reserved for the cardinal himself. But as Mademoiselle Mirepoix is neither your wife nor your sister, Sir Peter, it will be necessary to place her under a lady's care while here." "But," said Edward, fearing a longer and stricter separation from Lucette than he had calculated upon; but Monsieur de Tronson cut him short, gravely. "No buts, my young friend. It must be now as I say," he replied. "Wait here, mademoiselle: I will send some women to you in a few minutes. You, sir, follow me, and I will show you your apartment." Resistance, of course, was not to be thought of; but Edward could not part from Lucette coldly, and, before going, he took her in his arms and kissed her warmly, whispering in English the first real words of love which had yet been spoken between them. "Love me, Lucette," he said; "love me, whatever befalls." The tears rose in her beautiful eyes; but it was a moment when she felt there could be no coyness. "I do; I will," she murmured. "Ho! ho!" said the secretary, with a smile: "is it so far gone?" And he led the youth from the room. Passage after passage seemed to Edward to be placing a terrible distance between him and her he loved, and cold and dreary appeared, and indeed was, his walk through the palace of the king. At length, however, Monsieur de Tronson opened a door at the foot of some steps, and there, in a short sort of long vestibule, appeared the first human beings they had seen since they quitted the room of the secretary. The first person they beheld was the valet whom Edward had before seen; but at the other end of the corridor, near a heavy iron-plated door, was a guard with a halberd on his shoulder.