"Elise!" From afar a loud call interrupted; reverberating down the main passage, was caught up here and there. "Elise! Elise!" The whole under-world echoed to the name. "I promised to meet them at the guard-house," she explained hurriedly. And hardly knowing what she did, put out her hand, through the bars, toward him. In the darkness a hand seized hers; she felt herself drawn; held against the bars. They bruised her shoulder; hurt her face. The chill of the iron sent a shudder through her; though the pain she did not feel; she was cognizant only of a closer view of a figure; the chains from him to the wall; the bare, damp floor--then, of a voice low, tense, that now was speaking: "Your Ladyship, indeed, found means to punish a presumptuous fellow, who dared displease her. But _ma foi!_ she should have confined her punishment to the offender. Those stripes inflicted on him, my old servant! Think you I knew not it was my Lady's answer to the outlaw, who had the temerity to speak words that offended--" "You dream that! You imagine that!" The warmth of his hand seemed to burn hers; her fingers, so closely imprisoned, to throb with the fierce beating of his pulses. "I do not want you to think--I can't let you think," she began. "Elise!" The searchers were drawing nearer. She would have stepped back, but the fingers tightened on her hand. "They will be here in a moment--" Still he did not relinquish his hold; the dark face was next hers; the piercing, relentless eyes studied the agitated brown ones. The latter cleared; met his fully an instant. "Believe!" that imploring wild glance seemed to say. Did his waver for a moment; the harshness and mockery soften on his face? "Elise!" From but a short distance came the voice of the Marquis. A moment the Black Seigneur's hand gripped my lady's harder with a strength he was unaware of. A slight cry fell from her lips, and at once, almost roughly, he threw her hand from him. "Bah!" again he laughed mockingly. "Go to your lover." Released thus abruptly she wavered, straightened, but continued to stand before the dungeon as if incapable of further motion. "Elise! Are you there?" "There!" Caverns and caves called out. "There!" gibed voices amid a labyrinth of pillars, and mechanically she caught up the candle; fled. "Here she is!" Coming toward her quickly out of the darkness, the Marquis uttered a glad exclamation. "We have been looking for you everywhere. Did I not say you should not have attempted to return alone? _Mon dieu!_ you must have been lost!" CHAPTER XXVI A NEW ARRIVAL Thrice had the old nurse, Marie, assisting her mistress that night for the banquet, sighed; a number of times striven to hold my lady's eye and attention, but in vain. Only when the adorning process was nearly completed and the nurse knelt with a white slipper, did she, by a distinctly detaining pressure, succeed in arresting, momentarily, the other's bright strained glance.