"Lucie," asked Angelique, "would you like me to bring a gentleman who was in Louisbourg, and who can give you news of Christophe when he was there?" "Oh yes, mademoiselle; I should love it above all things," she answered, with a flush of joy over her pale face. "Very well; we will come to-morrow." There was every reason, for Lucy's sake, why Hugh should come, and in my heart I longed to see him again before I determined on my own course of action. It was a pleasing thought, too, that I should see him comforting one to whom it would mean so much. The morrow was a long day for both of us, and at four o'clock, just as it was growing dusk, I sate by her bed, listening anxiously to every footfall in the corridor, until at last I caught Angelique's light step, followed by a firmer tread, which I recognised at once. It would be hard to tell whether Lucy or I was the more excited. "Be calm, Lucy," I whispered, laying a trembling hand on hers; and I drew my chair up to the head of the bed, so that I was completely hidden by its white curtain. "Lucie," said Angelique, on entering, "I have brought my friend. Shall he come in?" "Yes, mademoiselle," answered Lucy, in an expectant voice. I heard Angelique go towards the door, and then heard Hugh enter. I caught the arms of my chair tightly as he approached the bed, when, to my amazement, I felt that Lucy had raised herself, and the next instant she cried, in a voice strained in agony: "Hugh Maxwell! What have you done with our son?" CHAPTER XXII I AM TORTURED BY MYSELF AND OTHERS In some manner I controlled myself, and in the confusion which followed Lucy's wild cry I opened the door beside me and stepped noiselessly into the adjoining room. I sank down into a chair, benumbed in body and bewildered in mind. Everything was in a whirl of confusion, and through it I heard the heart-breaking cry that was no hallucination of madness, no fancy of a disordered mind, but an arraignment straight from the heart of a woman who perhaps had suffered beyond what I was suffering now. What was happening behind those closed doors? Once the mad impulse flashed across me to enter and learn the worst, but I shrank appalled at the thought of exposing myself to further humiliation. In my seeking for some escape, I even questioned if I had heard aright; it seemed impossible that there should not be some explanation, that there was not some horrible mistake, and a fierce anger swept over me at the injustice of it all. Had I wasted the love of my youth--the love of my life--on a man whom I had endowed with every noble quality of which I could conceive to find that he was only of the same common clay as others whose advances I had ignored because I had set him so high?