Everything was forgotten and silenced by the compelling voice of his blood, which cried out that he loved her.
He stooped to her and caught her wrists in a grip that made her wince.
His voice grew tense.
"If you would bribe me to save his life, Suzanne, there is but one price that you can pay." "And that ?" she gasped her eyes looking up with a scared expression into his masterful face.
"Yourself," he whispered, with an ardour that almost amounted to fierceness.
She gazed a second at him in growing alarm, then she dragged her hands from his grasp, and covering her face she fell a-sobbing.
"Do not misunderstand me," he cried, as he stood erect over her.

"If you would have Ombreval saved and sent out of France you must become my wife." "Your wife ?" she echoed, pausing in her weeping, and for a moment an odd happiness seemed to fill her.

But as suddenly as it had arisen did she stifle it.

Was she not the noble daughter of the noble Marquis de Bellecour and was not this a lowly born member of a rabble government?
There could be no such mating.

A shudder ran through her.