This dream had been encouraged
more than ever, after she had saved the King from assassination.
'Pasquin Leroy' had then become her closest comrade,--always at hand,
and ever ready to fulfil her slightest behest;--while from his ardent
and eloquent glances,--the occasional lingering pressure of his hand,
and the hastily murmured words of tenderness which she could not
misunderstand, she knew that he loved her. But when he had disclosed
his real identity to be that of the King himself, all her fair hopes
had vanished!--and her spirit had shrunk and fallen under the blow.
Worse than all,--when she learned that this great and exalted
Personage, despite his throned dignity, did still continue to entertain
a passion for herself, the knowledge was almost crushing in its effect
upon her mind. Pure in soul and body, she would have chosen death any
time rather than dishonour; and in the recent developments of events
she had sometimes grown to consider death as good, and even desirable.
Now death had come to her through the very hand that had first aided
her to live! And so had she fulfilled the common lot of women, which
is, taken in the aggregate, to be wronged and slain (morally, when not
physically) by the very men they have most unselfishly sought to serve!
The heavy night passed away, and all through its slow hours the
murdered creature lay weltering in her blood, and shrouded in her
hair,--looked at by the pitiless stars and the cold moon, as they shed
their beams in turn through the high attic window.
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