“True, Marguerite—but there is a sweeter feeling yet that haunts me all the time. I only hope that you know what it is.” Marguerite gathered the frail drapery with which she had ventured into the night air, softly around her, but even through that St. Just could see how her heart rose and fell. “I—I must be going now,” she said. “But not alone—I cannot permit that; the streets of Paris are not safe for you. Come, let me help you over these stones.” Marguerite had passed over them once that night swiftly and safely as a young chamois on some mountain peak; but with those eyes upon her she grew timid, and held out her little hand, touching the stones daintily with her feet. He took her hand with a firm grasp, and led her over the rugged masses of stone, which was so broken up in heaps and chasms that every footstep brought its danger. At a jagged hollow, which the girl had sprung lightly over an hour before, she paused, and began to tremble. The youth reassured her with a smile; then threw his arm around her waist, lifted her over, and sat her down on the other side, bathed in blushes, which seemed shadows in the moonlight. At last these two young people reached the broken draw-bridge, crossed over its shaking timbers, and entered the dark court beyond. Here St. Just paused close by the stone bench where Marguerite had rested that day. “Here on this spot your dear lips told me the sweetest secret man ever learned,” he said, throwing his arms around the startled girl, and straining her to his heart. “Repeat it here—repeat it, my beloved. I love you, oh Heavens, how I do love you! Say—out of your dreams—be sure that it is out of your dreams—say that you love me.” Marguerite tried to speak, but the sweet words died on her lips as she gave them up to his kisses for a single instant. Then her voice came back, and she said with the innocent frankness of a child, “How could I help loving you?” CHAPTER LXXV. CRAFT MEETING TREACHERY. It was three nights after Mirabeau’s visit to St. Cloud, and Louison Brisot had not yet seen him. She waited with burning impatience, hour after hour, until a keen desire to reproach him got the better of her prudence; and she went at once to his residence. That day Count Mirabeau had absented himself from his seat in the Assembly. Filled with such dreams of love and ambition as had made his youth one wild season of political and social riot, he kept himself in the solitude of his own library, thinking out the programme of action which was to make him at once the saviour of the monarchy, and the favorite of the people.