More rapidly even than he had foreboded those changes had occurred.  In less time even than he had anticipated, the sad emergency for which Rose’s brother had prepared, as for a barely possible calamity, overtook Trudaine, and called for all the patience, the courage, the self-sacrifice which he had to give for his sister’s sake.  By slow gradations downward, from bad to worse, her husband’s character manifested itself less and less disguisedly almost day by day.  Occasional slights, ending in habitual neglect; careless estrangement, turning to cool enmity; small insults, which ripened evilly to great injuries—­these were the pitiless signs which showed her that she had risked all and lost all while still a young woman—­these were the unmerited afflictions which found her helpless, and would have left her helpless, but for the ever-present comfort and support of her brother’s self-denying love.  From the first, Trudaine had devoted himself to meet such trials as now assailed him; and like a man he met them, in defiance alike of persecution from the mother and of insult from the son.

The hard task was only lightened when, as time advanced, public trouble began to mingle itself with private grief.  Then absorbing political necessities came as a relief to domestic misery.  Then it grew to be the one purpose and pursuit of Danville’s life cunningly to shape his course so that he might move safely onward with the advancing revolutionary tide—­he cared not whither, as long as he kept his possessions safe and his life out of danger.  His mother, inflexibly true to her Old-World convictions through all peril, might entreat and upbraid, might talk of honor, and courage, and sincerity—­he heeded her not, or heeded only to laugh.  As he had taken the false way with his wife, so he was now bent on taking it with the world.

The years passed on; destroying changes swept hurricane-like over the old governing system of France; and still Danville shifted successfully with the shifting times.  The first days of the Terror approached; in public and in private—­in high places and in low—­each man now suspected his brother.  Crafty as Danville was, even he fell under suspicion at last, at headquarters in Paris, principally on his mother’s account.  This was his first political failure; and, in a moment of thoughtless rage and disappointment, he wreaked the irritation caused by it on Lomaque.  Suspected himself, he in turn suspected the land-steward.  His mother fomented the suspicion—­Lomaque was dismissed.

In the old times the victim would have been ruined, in the new times he was simply rendered eligible for a political vocation in life.  Lomaque was poor, quick-witted, secret, not scrupulous.  He was a good patriot; he had good patriot friends, plenty of ambition, a subtle, cat-like courage, nothing to dread—­and he went to Paris.  There were plenty of small chances there for men of his caliber.  He waited for one of them.  It came; he made the most of it; attracted favorably the notice of the terrible Fouquier-Tinville; and won his way to a place in the office of the Secret Police.