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But others were thinking of the Semaphore at this moment, others saw it indistinct, yet melancholy, in the moonlight. The Governor and his wife saw it, and Madame Solde said: “Alfred, I shall be glad when I shall see that no more.”

“You have too much feeling.”

“I suppose Marie makes me think more of it to-day. She wept this morning over all this misery and punishment.”

“You think that. Well, perhaps something more–“

“What more?”

“Laflamme.”

“No, no, it is impossible!”

“Indeed it is as I say. My wife, you are blind. I chanced to see him with her yesterday. I should have prevented him coming to-day, but I knew it was his last day with the portrait, and that all should end here.”

“We have done wrong in this–the poor child! Besides, she has, I fear, another sorrow coming. It showed itself to me to-day for the first time.” Then she whispered to him, and he started and sighed, and said at last:

“But it must be saved. By–! it shall be saved!” And at that moment Marie Wyndham was standing in the open window of the library of Pascal House. She had been thinking of her recent visit to the King’s Cave, where she had left food, and of the fact that Carbourd was not there. She raised her face towards the moon and sighed. She was thinking of something else. She was not merely sentimental, for she said, as if she had heard the words of the Governor and Madame Solde: “Oh! if it could be saved!”

There was a rustle in the shrubbery near her. She turned towards the sound. A man came quickly towards her. “I am Carbourd,” he said; “I could not find the way to the Cave. They were after me. They have tracked me. Tell me quick how to go.”

She swiftly gave him directions, and he darted away. Again there was a rustle in the leaves, and a man stepped forth. Something glistened in his hands–a rifle, though she could not see it plainly. It was levelled at the flying figure of Carbourd. There was a report. Marie started forward with her hands on her temples and a sharp cry. She started forward–into absolute darkness. There was a man’s footsteps going swiftly by her. Why was it so dark? She stretched out her hands with a moan.

“Oh! mother!–oh! mother! I am blind!” she cried.

But her mother was sleeping unresponsive beyond the dark-beyond all dark. It was, perhaps, natural that she should cry to the dead and not to the living.

Marie was blind. She had known it was coming, and it had tried her, as it would have tried any of the race of women. She had, when she needed it most, put love from her, and would not let her own heart speak, even to herself. She had sought to help one who loved her, and to fully prove the other–though the proving, she knew, was not necessary–before the darkness came. But here it was suddenly sent upon her by the shock of a rifle shot. It would have sent a shudder to a stronger heart than hers–that, in reply to her call on her dead mother, there came from the trees the shrill laugh of the mopoke–the sardonic bird of the South.

As she stood there, with this tragedy enveloping her, the dull boom of a cannon came across the valley. “From Ducos,” she said. “M. Laflamme has escaped. God help us all!” And she turned and groped her way into the room she had left.

She felt for a chair and sat down. She must think of what she now was. She wondered if Carbourd was killed. She listened and thought not, since there was no sound without. But she knew that the house would be roused. She bowed her head in her hands. Surely she might weep a little for herself–she who had been so troubled for others. It is strange, but she thought of her flowers and birds, and wondered how she should tend them; of her own room which faced the north–the English north that she loved so well; of her horse, and marvelled if he would know that she could not see him; and, lastly, of a widening horizon of pain, spread before the eyes of her soul, in which her father and another moved.