And now she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
His snowdrop was gazing straight at him from out great, wide eyes, her lips were parted as if she meant to speak, and her hand lay on the arm of her father, good Papa Legros, dressed all in black, and above whose sombre surcoat shone a kindly face almost distorted by its expression of anxiety and from which ran streams of perspiration which the poor man wiped off ever and anon with a bright-coloured handkerchief.
 
With a mechanical movement Michael passed his hand across his eyes. His brain returned from its long wandering in the realm of dreamland; the light ceased to flicker, the sea of grinning faces receded into the darkness. Michael now only saw Rose Marie. The devilish visions had been transformed into peaceful dreams of Heaven.
 
Though his mind—still feverish and numb—refused to believe that she was really there, yet his eyes took in every tiny detail of the golden picture which they saw.
 
There were the tiny curls that, ever rebellious, would break through the confines of the lace cap and flutter tantalisingly round her ear; there was the little mole just above the lip, which gave the perfect mouth, that otherwise had been accounted too serious, an exquisite air of piquancy; there was the delicate rise of the throat, peeping[409] above the lace kerchief, a god-like snare wherein he had once dared to hope that his lips would be entrapped.
 
And all the while that Michael looked on his beloved, Daniel Pye was busy with his perjuries, and Master Oates stood up to corroborate these. Once or twice the Lord Chief Justice had turned to the accused, expecting a contradiction of such obvious lies. But the only word that ever escaped the latter's lips came mechanically as from one who had learned a lesson by heart.
 
"I am guilty—what these men say is true."
 
Once the Attorney-General had spoken quite irritably:
 
"The prisoner's attitude, my lord," he said, "is one of contempt for this Court. He must be made to answer more fully the charges that are preferred against him."
 
"Then 'tis for you to question him," retorted the Lord Chief Justice drily.
 
Emboldened by Michael's attitude of passive acquiescence, Pye and Oates surpassed themselves. Their story gained in detail, in circumstantial broiderings under cross-examination. Once or twice their imagination and impudence carrying them too far, they palpably contradicted one another. A man's voice then rose from the midst of the spectators: "These men are accursed liars!"
 
The voice was authoritative and loud, as of a man accustomed to be obeyed. And no one cried "Hush!" to the remark, since it came from royal lips.
 
After an examination which we know lasted nearly an hour, the two witnesses were dismissed. They left the great hall together and walked with an assured air of satisfaction across to the small room beyond the bench, where they were bidden to wait in case they were required again. To a sanely judicial mind the only point which would present itself in the evidence of these miscreants as being[410] uncontradicted and unquestionably established by them, was that the treasonable converse between the accused and a minister of the King of France did take place at the tavern of the "Rat Mort" in Paris in the evening of the nineteenth day of April of this same year.
 
Beyond that it was a tangle which Michael, had he chosen, could easily have unravelled in his own favour. But this he did not mean to do; he was only anxious for the end.
 
While the lying informer spoke of that same nineteenth day of April his thoughts flew back on the sable wings of a dead past to all the memories that clung to that day.
 
The religious ceremony at St. Gervais, the dance on the dusty floor of the tailor's back shop, the ride through the darkness along the lonely road with his beloved clinging to him, the while his arm ached with an exquisite sense of numbness under the delicious burden which it bore.
 
These men spoke of the evening of that nineteenth day of April! Oh, the remembrance of every hour, every minute which the date recalled!
 
The darkened room in the old inn, the streaks of moonbeam which kissed the gold of her hair, the April breeze which caused her curls to flutter, and the sighing of the reeds and young acacia boughs like spirit whisperings that presaged impending doom!
 
He............