"She is an old woman," said Monsieur do Gemosac to any who spoke to him on this subject. "She is seventy-two, and fifty-eight of those years have been marked by greater misfortunes than ever fell to the lot of a woman. When she came out of prison she had no tears left, my friends. We cannot expect her to turn back willingly to the past now. But we know that in her heart she has never been sure that her brother died in the Temple. You know how many disappointments she has had. We must not awake her sleeping sorrow until all is ready. I shall make the journey to Frohsdorf--that I promise you. But to-night we have another task before us." "Yes--yes," answered his listeners. "You are to open the locket. Where is it?--show it to us." And the locket which Captain Clubbe's wife had given to Dormer Colville was handed from one to another. It was not of great value, but it was of gold with stones, long since discoloured, set in silver around it. It was crushed and misshapen. "It has never been opened for twenty years," they told each other. "It has been mislaid in an obscure village in England for nearly half a century." "The Vicomte de Castel Aunet--who is so clever a mechanician--has promised to bring his tools," said Monsieur de Gemosac. "He will open it for us--even if he find it necessary to break the locket." So the thing went round the room until it came to Loo Barebone. "I have seen it before," he said. "I think I remember seeing it long ago--when I was a little child." And he handed it to the old Vicomte de Castel Aunet, whose shaking fingers closed round it in a breathless silence. He carried it to the table, and some one brought candles. The Viconite was very old. He had learnt clock-making, they said, in prison during the Terror. "_Il n'y a moyen,_" he whispered to himself. "I must break it." With one effort he prised up the cover, but the hinge snapped, and the lid rolled across the table into Barebone's hand. "Ah!" he cried, in that breathless silence, "now I remember it. I remember the red silk lining of the cover, and in the other side there is the portrait of a lady with--" The Vicomte paused, with his palm covering the other half of the locket and looked across at Loo. And the eyes of all Royalist France were fixed on the same face. "Silence!" whispered Dormer Colville in English, crushing Barebone's foot under the table. CHAPTER XXII DROPPING THE PILOT "The portrait of a lady," repeated Loo, slowly. "Young and beautiful. That much I remember." The old nobleman had never removed his covering hand from the locket. He had never glanced at it himself. He looked slowly round the peering faces, two and three deep round the table. He was the oldest man present--one of the oldest in Paris--one of the few now living who had known Marie Antoinette. Without uncovering the locket, he handed it to Barebone across the table with a bow worthy of the old régime and his own historic name.