“Had I met you earlier, before I went as a beggar girl, he would never have known me.” “Yes, he would. That is perhaps one of the advantages of your escapade. You should then have tempted him, but under my protection.” “Ah! and then he would have fallen. I think it was best that the temptation should have come to me as it did, for I was stronger. When will he die?” “I expect to-night at midnight, for now there is no reason why he should live. But he may be longer. It depends upon when St Armand and myself have come to terms. It is only mortals who can foretell the future; to others it is the great game, uncertain.” But before he went away, he took her to the moonlit garden, and showed her the stables with a doorway built in them, no longer cupboard-sized. “At midnight come through here, and of two roads choose that to the left. Either is right, but on the higher road you’ll meet me sooner. I will come straight to you when I leave the High Priest’s Palace. Good-bye for a little while.” And so saying, he kissed her and went away. And Alice and she walked through the moonlit gardens silently. CHAPTER XXX That afternoon the great High Priest had taken worse, and, as the evening set in, all knew certainly that he had little time to live. Nurses and physicians had been called to the dying bedside, and conspicuously amongst the number was St Armand. Not conspicuous for his attentions to the dying man, but simply for his presence there. He was the only one who dared to defy appearances, and occasionally to yawn. Moreover, he insisted on smoking his cigars--the High Priest was too far gone to object, he said. Thus on till nearly midnight--a gusty, showery night, with an eerie wind that rose and fell in sobbing intervals. “Sister,” said he, as the shutters were being closed and the lights turned on, “how do you expect his holiness to die easily, lying under a cross beam and with the windows shut?” “I do not understand you, sir.” “How, in the name of the Serpent’s three tails, is he to get away under those conditions?” The nurse, who was a sensible woman, thought that he was jesting, and she paid no attention. After a while it was noticed that the dying man was becoming excited and very restless. His hands worked incessantly, and his sinking eyes gleamed with fire; but he could not speak, and the doctors thought his tongue was partially paralysed, for he made many efforts to frame words, but could not. Two or three times he tried to get out of bed, but was forcibly restrained. “If you don’t open the windows he’s safe to be like that,” said St Armand, and he went over himself and unlocked the shutters, flinging open the window and looking out into the blackness of the night. Everything without was absolutely silent, but for the rustling trees, swishing and bending in the wind, and the pattering rain-drops. For the skies above the gardens at Marble House were moonlit and serene--these storm-tossed and full of desolation.