his severity towards Isidore, and it was on this that she now relied for the success of her efforts to enlist the sympathy of the old marquis in favour of her cousin and her friend. Absorbed in these thoughts Clotilde took no note of time or distance, while the growing darkness and the absence of novelty in a ride from Valricour to Beaujardin, to say nothing of the pre-occupation of her mind, kept her from observing anything outside of the lumbering vehicle in which she sat. They had jogged on for a considerable time, however, when the coach stopped. Under ordinary circumstances this would hardly have interfered with Clotilde's meditations, the occurrence being common enough at a period when in France, as in other countries, most of the roads, except those along which the king himself was accustomed to travel, were usually in a deplorable condition, notwithstanding the lessons left behind by those famous old road-makers the Romans, and in spite of the iniquitous road-laws which threw upon all but the nobles an intolerable amount of personal labour in the making and maintaining of the highways. But on the present occasion Clotilde's attention was arrested by the circumstance that men were busy changing the horses, and although it was now dark, she noticed at the roadside a great white stone cross, from which she knew that they must have turned off from the direct road to Beaujardin. Surprised, and perhaps a little alarmed, she tried to open one of the windows to obtain some explanation, but it was so tightly fastened that she found this impossible. She tried the other, but that too defied all her efforts, and whilst she was still thus engaged the coach was once more driven on, and now at a gallop. Then, as she peered anxiously out, she observed that the horseman who rode close to the carriage was a much bigger man than the groom from Beaujardin who had started with them from Valricour, and that he was muffled in a great riding-cloak. Clotilde was one of those women whose courage rises just when that of others usually fails: without an instant's hesitation she stooped down, and the next moment the high wooden heel of one of her shoes sent the window-pane flying in shivers out upon the road. A touch of the spur at once brought her escort alongside of the broken window. "Holloa!" he exclaimed, in a voice Clotilde had never heard before, "what is all this about?" "Fellow!" she replied, indignantly, "what is the meaning of this? Who are you?--and why have we gone out of our road?" "Ah, well," answered the man coolly, "of course it is natural enough that you should want to know, but----" "Impudent scoundrel!" cried Clotilde, "stop the carriage this moment and let me alight, or----"