Lives perhaps were in the balance, but she was a woman, and who could tell what slight influences might turn the scale! The servant saw her hesitation.

"If Madame will but remain here, I will bring what is necessary," he said, and was gone.

In a moment he appeared again with a silver basin, a mirror, and a few necessaries of the toilet.
"I suppose, Madame," said the servant, with fluttered anxiety, to show that he knew who she was, "I suppose you have had sometimes to make rough shifts, even in palaces." She gave him a gold piece.

It cheered her in the moment to think that in this forbidding house, on a forbidding mission, to a forbidding man, she had one friend.

She made a hasty toilet, and but for the great paleness of her cheeks, no traces remained of the three days' travel with their hardship and anxiety.