Father, save those at sea to-night. _Miserere Domine!_ Was it profane to have thought of that just now? Strenuously she tried to force herself out of that train of thought, but the words of matins, of the morning prayer, oddly eluded her, and instead she found herself repeating mechanically the “_recommendation_” for a departing soul: “Kyrie eleison Christe eleison Sancta-Maria, Ora pro eo....” What ailed her, she wondered, and hastily she implored: “Pax huic domini Et omnibus habitantibus in ea--” giving the response in the same breath as the “_supplication_” in her sudden and unaccountable distress. Sheets of rain were sluicing against the painted windows of the little church--rain that, caught up by the frantic wind, slanted before it and struck almost horizontally at the glass. Again without very explainable reasons Marguerite shivered and went on praying fervently until the blast paused, as if to take breath. And then there happened during that sinister lull one of those phenomena that landsmen so seldom see, for a storm-light--snatched from the sun rising somewhere out of view beyond the cloud-roof that still closed down the darkness upon the world--smote the great rose-window behind the high altar with a dull orange jet of flame that for an instant seemed to set it on fire. It sank, flared up once more for the beat of a heart, fell, and was replaced by a flashing zigzag of intensely brilliant green, seen and lost in the same breath while it bisected the gold-and-white _fleur-de-lysèd_ glass of the upper window. Marguerite felt she must be dreaming, but at her side she saw Salvières rise quickly to his feet, and she imitated him. The abbé was just pronouncing the last _Amen_, and with his face turned toward the altar he had also seen, for after a rapid genuflection he joined the others. “A wreck somewhere!” he brusquely stated, as he almost ran down the side-steps, his hand at the fastening of his surplice, his sea-blue eyes wide with the passion of his first profession--a sailor from head to foot--in a cassock! It did not take them long to wrap themselves in oilskins and don sou’westers: Salvières, Régis, and the abbé. The great alarm-bell of the Castle, already sounding tocsin-wise, succeeded in overtoning the tempest by dismal fits and starts. Marguerite ran along the cloisters, snatched up a hooded coat, and, followed breathlessly by Garrassime (who had left Piotr in the Duchess’s care), made at full speed for the _chemin de ronde_ outside the chancel. The men of the house were no longer in sight, and as soon as she turned the corner to the cliff-path she caught the full force of the wind and tried to battle against it; but at first she could not succeed, and was forced to fall back under the lee of a buttress. By then Garrassime had caught up with her. “Don’t go, Illustrious; don’t!” he tried to shout, but a gust swooped down his throat and he stood gasping beside her, wiping the rain from his eyes.