Of one other, however, he thought little and cared less. He had never loved the Duchesse de Castellucchio, beautiful as she was; he had regarded her only as a woman who might by a fortunate chance, if the Pope should prove yielding, be able to rehabilitate him in the eyes of the world--and able also to free him from the load of debt that bore him down. Able to assist him to regain the pinnacle to which by his birth and rank he was entitled, but from which by his own failings and errors he had been hurled headlong. "Nor," he said, and once more he smiled bitterly, "did she love me. Has one of her family ever loved aught but himself or herself? But I served her turn, I enabled her to escape out of France and from her demoniac. While, had a _pis-aller_ been required, a De Beaurepaire might well have replaced a Ventura. Now she is safe in Italy and I am here. She should be content." The key grated in the lock as the doomed man mused thus upon the woman whom he had helped to save from a hateful life; and the bitterness of his fate must stand as atonement for his thoughts of one who was far from being the hard, selfish creature he pronounced her. A moment later the other woman, the woman he loved so fondly, was by his side. Behind her followed the Père Bourdaloue, who, after bidding two of the gendarmerie to remain outside until he called them, went to the farther end of the room and left the lovers as much alone as was possible. "Louis!" Emérance exclaimed, as she drew near him. "Louis! Once more we are together. Louis! Louis! Oh! my love." "_Mon amour. Ma mie_," he cried, clasping her in his arms, while, as he did so, he saw that, though her face was white--white as the long gown (tied round her waist with a cord) which she now wore, and in which to-morrow, nay, to-day! she would go to the scaffold--there was still upon that face, in those soft eyes, a look of happiness extreme. "Thank God it is so. And he," with a look at the priest at the farther end of the room, "has told you? We shall die, we shall go to our death together as man and wife." "Nay," Emérance whispered, though as she did so her arms had sought his neck and enlaced it, "Nay, not as that. But----" "Not as that! You--you who love me so--will not be my wife?"