There was a hubbub and an outcry in the house approaching nearer. Clovis and the chevalier appeared at a window shouting madly: "Save her!" The marquis disappeared from the balcony, and touching a spring, vanished down a secret staircase which gave upon the slippery gangway, accompanied by Mademoiselle Brunelle, who with a new care upon her brow was swiftly following his lead. De Gange received the inanimate burthen into his arms, while tears poured down his face. "God bless you, Jean," he sobbed, "God bless you. I will never forget this deed. She will live--she has but swooned. Jean, you have saved her from death--me from a life-long remorse." Aglaé's clouded visage grew more perplexed as he took roughly from her the mantle she had cast over her shoulders to wrap it round his dripping burthen. "He takes my cloak," she muttered, "not caring if I feel cold!" "Aglaé, feel," he whispered anxiously. "Am I not right? Does not her pulse still beat?" Mademoiselle Brunelle roused herself from astonished reverie to attend to the exigencies of the moment. "Yes," she declared, with authoritative promptitude. "The poor crazy lady lives. Toinon, warm a bed without delay. Jean, take horse at once and fetch a doctor. We two will see to her meanwhile." Moaning and shaking, the scared and palsied chevalier stood helpless by, wringing his hands together. "She went in the boat alone, poor thing," he whimpered, "because she could not trust me. Oh! that fatal night--that fatal night! Of course she would not trust me." Meanwhile, the marquis and his affinity bore their burthen up the winding stair. Neither spoke till they reached the saloon and laid the unconscious marquise upon a couch. Then Aglaé, more perplexed than ever, sighed. "Thank God, she's saved; thank God!" Clovis murmured, fervently. "Who would have ever thought," reflected the governess aloud, "that so long-suffering and useless piece of goods could be goaded to take her life?" "Hush!" shuddered the marquis. "Ever after I should have deemed myself her murderer!" "A thousand pities," mused mademoiselle. "If he had only let her drown, at this moment you would be free." Clovis looked up in horror, blanched to the pallor of a statue. CHAPTER XII. DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND. With a turn of the kaleidoscope is another pattern formed. Lying in the great state bed with its ponderous carven canopy and heavy curtains of deep blue velvet fringed with gold, Gabrielle wondered whether she had awakened in a kinder world or whether she was dreaming in the old rugose one. No. It was the same gorgeously gloomy chamber in which she had so often wept, with its dim ancestors frowning from the background of mouldering arras.