(2)

“No, don’t do that, Comte!” he said suddenly, as de Brencourt, kneeling by him in the fern, began to take out a knife. “One doesn’t want to make more . . . parade . . . about this business than one can avoid. Help me out of the coat instead.” And he began to unbutton it.

“Much better let me slit the sleeve,” objected de Brencourt with reason. However, seeing that the Marquis was determined, he unfastened his swordbelt, and as carefully as he could, stripped off the long uniform coat.

“I suppose you don’t wish to preservethis?” he remarked, and, ripping up the drenched shirt-sleeve, examined the injury. In the outer side of the Marquis de Kersaint’s forearm, midway between wrist and elbow, was a small round aperture, from which the blood was welling in a stream so steady as to suggest that it would never cease.

“The ball is still there, of course,” observed its sender, absorbed in his examination. “Otherwise——” He came to an abrupt pause, suddenly realising by how very little his messenger of death had fallen short of its goal.

“Otherwise it would be in my heart, you were going to say,” finished the Marquis with composure.

“Perhaps it was stopped by one of the bones,” muttered de Brencourt, avoiding his eye. “I expect there is a breakage, as you say. . . . However, I had best tie it up as quickly as possible. I shall need your handkerchief as well as mine—perhaps your scarf too. It is bleeding like a fountain.”

Carefully as a surgeon, and with something of a surgeon’s dispassionate interest, he staunched and bandaged the injury which he himself had made—no bad exemplar,at that moment, of what there was gallant and chivalrous in a practice which had little enough to commend it.

“So there was only one shot after all,” observed M. de Kersaint presently. “Did you mean to kill me, Comte?”

M. de Brencourt, tightening the last knot, looked at him with an odd expression. “Yes,” he replied.

“I thought so,” returned the Marquis coolly. “I am afraid, then, that this must have been somewhat of a disappointment. You take it very well. It was the moonlight, I suppose? In many ways I should have been glad of your success.”

A dark flush ran over his opponent’s face. He made no reply, and laying down the bandaged arm gently on its possessor’s knee, began to scrub at his own bloody hands with a frond of bracken. When he had got them comparatively clean he threw it away, got up from his knees, took a turn or two and came back.

“Marquis,” he said, rather stiffly, “I aimed as well as I could. Evidently it was not to be. . . . And now, if you will allow me, I should like to take back the term I applied to you this evening. It is not applicable—and I do not think that I ever believed it was. But I meant you to fight me. You can guess why . . . and we need not go into what is done with. . . . And now that we have met, and blood has flowed—and I sincerely regret, as I said, that it should be yours alone——” He stopped.

The Marquis de Kersaint, still without his coat, got up from the fallen stone. To him also a duel was sacramental, and bloodshed, at the risk of life, did serve, between gentlemen, to wash out enmity. To what degree, however, that stain was ineffaceable, they could hardly know then, for they were both moved, little as they showed it, by the near passage of the dark angel.

“Thank you, M. de Brencourt,” he said quietly. “Allow me to apologise, in my turn, for the blow I struck you—though I think you understand why I struck. I am quite willing to take your hand if you are willing to take mine; indeed, I was going to propose that, as neither of us after all is to remain permanently beside the Moulin-aux-Fées, we had better try, for the King’s sake, to forget, if we can, what has passed between us. I at least amcontent to try. I do not wish to change my second-in-command.”

“Nor I to change my leader!” cried the Comte, really shaken by the generosity which could forget his deliberate campaign of insults. He too held out his left hand, and they sealed the compact. Perhaps at the moment he almost forgot how much less complete the covenant was than the other imagined—forgot what he was holding back and meant to go on holding back. . . .

“And now,” he said, recovering himself, “if you insist on getting into that sleeve again.” He picked up the redingote. “It is a long way back—at least I fear you will find it so, de Kersaint.”

“I only wish it were longer,” said the Marquis, with a little frown. “They have such sharp ears, those young men of mine—I do not think the bone is broken after all. Help me into my coat, and lend me your arm, and I shall do very well.”

The Clos-aux-Grives at last, white in the moonlight, between the sparser trees of the forest’s verge. It was high time. But before the duellists were quite near enough to give the countersign to the sentry, whose challenge had just rung out, a figure from within the courtyard, shouting something to him, vaulted the low wall by the Chouan and raced towards them. So vehement was its haste that the two gentlemen stopped. It was then seen that the athlete was the Chevalier de la Vergne, in such a hurry that he had hardly time to pull himself up and to salute.

“I saw you coming, Monsieur le Marquis,” he exclaimed breathlessly. “There is great news—M. l’Abbé has come back! . . .What, are you hurt, sir!”

(“Damnation!” said the Comte de Brencourt under his breath.)

“Yes, a trifle,” returned the Marquis carelessly. “A stray Blue in the forest; nothing to worry about. Come, Comte, let us go and welcome the Abbé. This is indeed good news—if it means his success.” And, loosing the Comte’s arm, as much, perhaps, to show his ability to do so as because the Comte displayed a tendency to be rooted to the spot, he began to walk towards the entrance.

“O, Monsieur le Marquis,” exclaimed the young officer, accompanying him, “are you sure that it is not much? Why, I can see the blood on your sleeve . . . and on your breast too! Take my arm, de grâce,—and you will let me turn out the guard at once, will you not?”

“That is unnecessary, my dear boy,” replied his leader; “so is your support. M. de Brencourt settled the Blue for me.—Good-night, Sans-Souci,” he said, as the sentry presented arms.

“But you will not find the Blue, La Vergne—he got away after all,” added the Comte quickly from behind. To him the duel was a secondary matter now—and, in itself, the Abbé’s success or failure also. What other information had the priest brought from Mirabel . . . and how soon would he divulge it? Would it be possible to see him before de Trélan did? Hardly . . .

“And where is M. Chassin?” enquired M. de Kersaint directly they got inside, when the light from the sconce on the wall instantly betrayed to Artamène’s distressed but ever observant eyes how pale he was—and with a smear of blood on his cheek too. “In my room?—then I will see him at once.”

“Let me light you up the staircase, Messieurs!” cried the zealous Artamène, taking down the sconce.

“Are not the stairs lighted as usual?” asked the Comte irritably. “Yes, of course they are. No, go to your bed, La Vergne, and don’t harass M. de Kersaint any more!”

“You forget, La Vergne is officer of the guard to-night,” said the Marquis with a little smile. “Goodnight, my boy. Don’t bother about that Blue. As for my arm, the Abbé will do anything further that is necessary.”

And he went off, followed by the Comte. Artamène looked after them, uttering wicked words below his breath; then he replaced the sconce, tiptoed into the “nursery,” and picked his way among the dozen or so slumbering forms there till he came to Lucien du Boisfossé’s pallet in a corner.

“Lucien, wake up!” he whispered, stooping over him and gently shaking him. “I want to tell you something!”

Astoundingly, Lucien opened his eyes at once. “Don’t blow into my ear like that, officer of the guard!” hereturned. “And there’s no need to poke me so. I was awake. I have not been to sleep.”

“Great Heavens!” ejaculated Artamène. This was indeed an evening of surprises.

“I was,” said Lucien, complacently, “composing a proclamation in rhyme to thepataudsof this canton. It was to begin——”

“Never mind that,” cut in Artamène ruthlessly. “Two much more interesting things have happened while you have been asl——I mean awake. The first is, that M. l’Abbé has returned from Mirabel——”

Lucien sat up in bed. “Laus Deo!” he exclaimed. “And has he got—it?”

“He wouldn’t tell me,” said the enquirer, “but I think from his manner that he has not been unsuccessful. However, the second thing is even more momentous. M. le Marquis and M. le Comte have just come back from a moonlight stroll in the direction of the forest, M. le Marquis as white as a sheet, with blood all over the sleeve of his coat and his right arm tucked into his breast.”

“Good God!” ejaculated Lucien, bounding upon his couch.

“Chut! don’t wake the others! (It will be impossible to keep it quiet, though.) It appears that they met a Blue in the forest—or at any rate a Blue was in the forest, dropped, perhaps like an acorn from a tree, for I know not how otherwise he could have been there—and he shot at and wounded M. le Marquis—one doesn’t yet know how seriously—and then, apparently, M. de Brencourt settled the hash of the Blue. At least, he fired and hit him; though he thinks the fellow got away. Now, what do you think of that for a Breton night’s entertainment? Don’t sit on your bed looking like an owl, Monsieur du Boisfossé!”

“An owl,” replied the young man unperturbed, “is the emblem of wisdom, also of us Chouans. I am thinking this, my Artamène, that while lying here engaged in the labours of composition, I heard, far away—so far away that I did not think it worth while disturbing the slumbers of the officer of the guard——”

“Well, what did you hear?” asked his friend, kicking him gently in return for this thrust.

“A shot—one shot,” replied Lucien.

Artamène’s mobile face changed, “Of course you will repeat that I was asleep, which is a lie. But I never heard it—nor the sentries, I presume, since none of them reported it.”

“But, my dear friend,” enquired Lucien earnestly, “if I was able to hear one shot, why didn’t I hear two?”

They stared at each other in the dim light, these two young investigators, the one sitting up in his shirt on his pallet, the other, booted and sword-girt, kneeling beside him.

“You mean,” said the latter after a moment, “that if you heard the shot which this solitary Blue fired at M. le Marquis, why did you not hear the shot which M. de Brencourt fired at the Blue?”

“That is my meaning,” responded Lucien weightily.

“So that—provided you were not dreaming—there was only one shot fired . . . and that was fired at the Marquis.”

Lucien nodded. “Obviously, since he has been hit.”

“And that shot could not have fired itself.”

“It is usual to infer a finger on the trigger.”

“The question is, Whose finger?—No, Lucien, we had better not go any further! As we have already said, there has been storm in the atmosphere lately. And this desire for exercise in the moonlight! . . . Yet it must have been all en règle, even though there were no witnesses, since they came back together on good terms—arm in arm, in fact. But for the Marquis to proceed to such an extremity!—I never did like M. de Brencourt!”

“I think you are going too fast, mon ami,” remarked the soberer Lucien. “They would never have chosen pistols, and risked being heard at headquarters.”

“They seem to have chosenapistol, however,” retorted Artamène. “Whatever has happened, I am convinced that there has been the devil of a lot of lying done to-night . . . and that there will be even more to-morrow!”

“And who——”

“Charlemagne, I regret to say,” responded his friend, shaking his head, “—Charlemagne, who recently read me such a homily on truthfulness!”

Up in the Marquis de Kersaint’s room M. Pierre Chassin, priest and plotter, tired as he was, had been for some time pacing uneasily up and down. He had just returned from the mouth of the Seine and the successful despatch to England of the gold of Mirabel, which (as the agent in Paris at whose house it had been accumulating had indeed come under suspicion) the Abbé had had to pack up with exceeding haste, and take to the coast himself. But though he had just passed some agitated days and nights between Paris and Harfleur, the memory of them was as nothing to that of the shock and emotion he had experienced in the chapel at Mirabel. So that he was thinking at the moment scarcely at all of what he had so dexterously got out of the château, but of what he had left in it. And he was fairly distracted.

For the twentieth time he cursed the contre-temps which had hurried him away from Mirabel in so untimely a fashion, before he had had opportunity to decide whether he ought or ought not to break his solemn promise to Gaston—that promise renewed at Hennebont. Now he saw clearly that it would have been right to break it, and that if he had only been granted a little longer there he would have done so. And had not such grave issues depended on his getting the money into safety he would willingly have risked his own personal liberty by remaining a few hours longer near the Duchesse; he would even have returned to Mirabel when his errand was accomplished, but for the practical certainty of being arrested and thereby, probably, compromising her. Even now the idea had visited him of writing to her and revealing the Marquis de Kersaint’s identity. But that would indeed be confiding his foster-brother’s jealously-guarded secret to the birds of the air, for he could not use a cipher to Mme de Trélan,and the letter might be intercepted by the Government . . . and it might some day mean Gaston’s life if the Directory knew who he really was. Still, she herself might write to the “Marquis de Kersaint” to make enquiries. God grant it! Or she might come in person, as he had so earnestly pressed.

Yet, if only he had learnt her secret otherwise than under the seal of the confessional, when the knowledge might not be communicated, might not be used. If only he had had the wit to guess it! But we only see what we have some grounds for believing that we shall see. . . . Here he was again, possessed of information he could not impart to the person vitally interested—only in this case time would never show him that he ought to disclose it. His lips were shut, absolutely, till eternity. Some other person must make the revelation—and the only other person who had the necessary knowledge was the Comte de Brencourt.

And M. de Brencourt had escaped, was already back. Perhaps he had told Gaston by this time—for what more natural than that the “kinsman” of the Duc de Trélan should be immediately informed of a fact of such paramount importance to his relative? Something, however, made the priest quite sure that M. de Brencourt had not taken this course—the remembrance of what he knew to be his deliberate lie to the Duchesse de Trélan. After viewing that lie from every side M. Chassin had come to a pretty correct estimate of the motive that had prompted it, and it did not raise his hopes of forcing the Comte to a revelation. Indeed, he almost wondered why M. de Brencourt had returned to the Clos-aux-Grives at all.

He wondered, too, with a growing uneasiness, on what conceivable errand the two gentlemen could have gone out to-night, as, on his own arrival, the exhilarated Artamène had told him they had done. Why should they both go, at such an hour, and without the shadow of an escort?

Then he heard steps and voices in the passage, and stopped his pacing. They were back. His forebodings suddenly seemed ridiculous. The door was opened a little way.

“Thank you, de Brencourt. Good-night,” said Gaston’s voice, with a ring of fatigue in it. “No, thanks; the Abbé will do anything that is necessary.” And he came in.

The light in the room, emanating from a somewhat smoky lamp, did not instantly reveal his state, and he said, in a quite natural manner, “My dear Pierre! This is indeed good! And I am to congratulate you, I think?”

M. Chassin had advanced round the table to take his outstretched left hand. Nearer, he saw; and he no longer took the hand in question—he caught at it.

“Gaston! What in God’s name has happened to you? Here—sit down, for pity’s sake!”

He pulled out the nearest chair from the table, and, far from unwillingly, the wounded man sat down in it, saying as he did so, “But, my dear Pierre, why all this emotion at the sight of a little blood?”

The Abbé suddenly made use of a very unecclesiastical expression. “What has happened to you?” he repeated, standing over him.

“If you must know,” said his foster-brother, leaning back with a little smile in the chair, “I have had the bad luck to be winged by a Blue who must have been lurking in the forest, and the wound, slight in itself, has bled a good deal, that is all.—Sit down, Pierre, and tell me your news. You have succeeded—I can see it!”

How he could see it on the perturbed countenance gazing down at him was not easy to guess.

“Yes, I have succeeded,” returned the priest shortly. “But there is plenty of time to talk about that later. I will see this wound first, if you please. What in the name of fortune were you doing in the forest at this time of night? And who bandaged this up—who was the imbecile who took your coat off you and put it on again instead of slitting up the sleeve?”

For the Marquis, submitting to the inevitable, had stiffly and painfully drawn his arm out of the breast of his coat and laid it on the table.

“One question at a time, mon cher,” he said. “M. de Brencourt was with me, and it was he who was kind enough to do what he could for me. I myself was the imbecile who insisted on getting into my coat again.”

“And why, may I ask?” enquired the Abbé, rapidly unbandaging. “Do you enjoy putting yourself to pain?”

“Does anybody?” retorted his patient. “I did notwant to cause more alarm on my return than I needed; that was why.”

“Humph; very thoughtful of you!” commented M. Chassin, glancing at him. “Tch! tch! a nice business! The ball is still there!”

“I believe it is,” admitted M. de Kersaint almost apologetically.

“Can you move your fingers?”

“I can, but I don’t want to.”

“I wonder where it has got to,” murmured the Abbé, still examining. “Does that hurt?”

“Yes, infernally,” responded the victim, wincing.

“Very well, I will not do it again. Wherever it is the bullet will have to come out.”

“Naturally,” said the Marquis resignedly. “But at least tie my arm up for to-night—and tell me about the treasure.”

“Tell me first about this, Gaston. Was the man near—this looks to me as if it had been fired from a few yards off only? Did you see him?”

“N . . . no; he was in the shadow under the trees.”

“Whereabouts?”

His foster-brother hesitated. “Not far from the Moulin-aux-Fées.”

“Holy Virgin, what were you doing there?”

“Perhaps foolishly, taking a walk.” And then he went on quickly, “But are you not going to tie this thing up, or am I to spend the night like this?”

For his bared arm, streaked with blood and much swollen round the little bluish orifice, rested before him on the table, and the Abbé had retired into the bedroom.

“I am going to wash it first,” came his voice from within. The Marquis put his head back against the chair. He suddenly looked exhausted.

The sound of pouring water was heard. “This solitary Republican had a musket, I imagine—or was it a pistol? The wound looks to me rather like a pistol-wound.”

“No, it was a musket . . . at least I suppose so,” replied the duellist almost inaudibly. The priest came to the door of the bedroom and looked at him for a second; then he vanished again and reappeared with a glass in his hand.

“Drink this, if you please, Gaston!” he said authoritatively. His brother opened his eyes.

“I detest brandy,” he said, almost petulantly. “And you surely do not think that I am going to faint?”

“That is as it may be,” returned the Abbé, watching the speaker narrowly as he took and drained the glass. And he washed and bandaged very speedily, asking not a single further question during the operation. Perhaps he had come to the conclusion that he were better advised not to do so, for other reasons than that his patient was not in the most fitting condition to answer them. After which, refusing in his own turn to satisfy any enquiries about the treasure that evening, he announced his intention of acting as the Marquis’s body-servant for the nonce; and did so.

“You’ll do best with this pillow under your arm,” he observed when the wounded man was in bed. “We will have the surgeon from Lanvennec as early as we can get him to-morrow morning.”

“Damnable nuisance, that!” muttered the sufferer impatiently. “Are you sure that you could not manage to extract the ball yourself, Pierre?”

“Having some small idea of the intricate structure even of the human arm,” responded M. Chassin, arranging the pillow under the arm in question, “I am quite sure that I could not, without possibly maiming you for life. And why should you object to having a surgeon?—Is that comfortable?”

“Since you succeeded in extracting the gold from Mirabel,” observed Mirabel’s owner, looking up at him with a rather feverish brilliance in his eyes, “I should have thought that a trifle like this would be nothing to you. My God, Pierre, have you really got it all—twenty-five thousand pistoles? It is almost too good to believe! Why, with half that amount——”

The priest held up his finger, smiling. “Yes, I got it nearly all away. And now you must——”

“A moment, Pierre! no, I insist on asking this! That woman at Mirabel—the concierge; I hope she has not been compromised in any way? I should be most deeply concerned if it were so.”

“Ah, the concierge,” repeated M. Chassin, and hepaused. “—No, as far as I know, she has not fallen under suspicion at all. But I had to leave extremely hurriedly, so that I should be very glad if I—if you, rather, could make enquiries on the point.”

“I shall do so,” said his foster-brother. “Think of what I owe her—the boy’s safety, perhaps his life. . . . Why are you looking at me like that, Pierre?”

The priest pulled himself together. “You have asked enough questions for to-night, Gaston. Just answer me one in return.—Since we parted, has not M. de Brencourt . . . guessed your secret?”

The Marquis flushed, and his mouth tightened. “I think he guessed it long ago.”

“But he knows it now, beyond guessing—you know that he knows?”

A pause. “Yes,” said the Duc de Trélan at last, frowning and reluctant. “I know . . . that he knows.”

He turned his head away on the pillow.

“Thank you,” responded M. Chassin rather grimly. And then, he added, in a tone astonishingly light-hearted, “I daresay it is as well.”

The Duc bit his lip. “I am glad you think so,” he replied in an exceedingly cold voice. And from the reply and its manner the priest learnt what he wanted to learn. M. de Brencourt had made no pleasant use of his knowledge.

“If you need anything in the night, or cannot sleep, Gaston, call for me. I shall spend it in your room out there.—Yes, it is necessary. Try not to make calculations about what Mirabel has given you, but get some rest if you can.”

“And if I cannot, what pleasanter subject could I have to think about?” enquired his patient, looking up at him again. The frown was gone. “And for that, as for so much else, I have to thank you, my brother.” He held out his left hand.

“And suppose,” said the Abbé in a low voice, as he took it in both his own, “suppose that I had come back with my news to find you with a bullet in your heart! Gaston, you might have remembered . . . me!”

The hand in his own returned his grip, but the voice said, with fair composure, “Yes, it was foolhardy, that walk. But surely, Pierre, you know that one day or the otheryou are certain to find me as you say; and you know, too, that if I have finished my task it is what I should desire.”

“Yes,” said Pierre Chassin very gravely. “I do not wish you any better death, when the time comes. But the death you faced to-night was not worthy of you. Perhaps the prayers of . . . of one who lived at Mirabel averted it. And I know you must have been tried beyond endurance. . . . See, I have shaded the candle so; and remember to call me. Good-night, mon frère.”

It was soon plain to Gaston de Trélan that, between bodily pain and mental turmoil, sleep was not likely to visit him much that night. He would, at least, keep that fact from Pierre if he could. . . . Poor Pierre! it seemed to be his fate to cause him anxiety! And he owed him so much, more than a man could ever repay: his life—that was little—but what measure of self-respect he had also.

That life he had nearly cast away this evening, and, because of his present position and circumstances, he fully shared the priest’s reprobation of the hazard, but no other course had been possible, for not Pierre himself, who had so quickly penetrated the tale of the “Blue,” could guess the lengths to which he had suffered de Brencourt to go before he consented to fight him. Even to Pierre he was not going to repeat the things the Comte had said. . . .

Seven years ago, in London, only the little priest’s affection and determination had prevented society from saying next day, “You remember that French émigré, the Duc de Trélan, whom we used to meet everywhere? Well, he has just shot himself—and small wonder!” And it was not as if Gaston and his protégé were then on terms of intimacy, for they had seen little of each other for the previous ten years or so, since his own visits to St. Chamans had become so much rarer—above all since the priest had come under his displeasure for something he had ventured to say to him down there not unconnected with Mme de Céligny. Few people, even of his own rank, under M. de Trélan’s displeasure cared to have dealings with him in that condition, and yet this peasant-priest, who had never approached his patron in his own need (for the Duc afterwards discovered that he had been living in London for weeks on the verge of starvation) had the disinterested courage to oppose him in the blackest hour of his life. AndPierre Chassin had done more than stay his finger on the trigger, for when, during that dreadful vigil, Gaston himself had said, out of his agony, that no other path remained open to him, since neither in England nor in France could he ever look an acquaintance in the face again, it was the Abbé who replied, “Then change your name. Do not go to serve with Condé, as you were intending; go where no one knows you.” And so, as the Marquis de Kersaint, the Duc de Trélan—a soldier by education and the descendant of soldiers—entered Austrian service against the French Republic, thinking, mistakenly, that he could soon throw away his life on the battlefield; as the Marquis de Kersaint he rose to command, found a certain anodyne in hard work and fighting, and was in touch by letter during those years with the only man he could really call friend—his only confidant at least—the humbly-born foster-brother who had stood by him in his extremity; and had earned the right to address him more freely than a brother by blood would ever have dared to do.

But of the two things he sought—forgetfulness or death—M. de Trélan had found neither. For him the arrogant motto of his race was only too true—‘Memini et permaneo, I remember and I remain.’ It soon became clear to him that when a man desired extinction he could not have it. What of the hazards of that Italian campaign, of the fights for Mantua, of Castiglione, Caldiero, Arcola, through which he had always come untouched till the day of Rivoli? Even then death had tossed him aside in the end.

Indeed, that disastrous fourteenth of January, 1797, when the young, haggard-eyed general from Corsica had beaten the Austrian marshal on that plateau among the mountains, had brought Gaston de Trélan not death but honour. At Vienna, when he had recovered from his all but fatal wound, the Emperor’s hand had bestowed on him the coveted Cross he wore. So, when the peace of Campoformio had ended Austria’s wars for a time, and the Abbé Chassin, now an accredited agent of the Royalists of the West, had deterred him from entering Russian service and persuaded him, despite his hatred of the place, to come to London, he came, in his borrowed name—and found himself, to his surprise, no little of a hero there also.For there had been attached to Alvintzy’s staff at Rivoli an English officer of discernment, who, greatly struck by the part played in the battle by “Colonel de Kersaint” and his practically forlorn hope of a column, while much criticising the higher command for devoting it to destruction, had not spared in his despatches eulogies of its leader nor regrets for his supposed fate. And after a little while spent in London, in very different circles from those in which he moved before, the “Marquis de Kersaint” was offered by the Comte d’Artois and his council the post of organising and leading Finistère. He accepted; but nothing would induce him to go to Edinburgh for the personal interview which the Prince desired. They had met too often at Versailles for that.

So he had now in his hands the chance to do something that she whom he had lost would have approved. In those years of self-imposed expiation he had learnt what he had thrown away, not so much in failing her at the moment of peril, which he had done in ignorance, but through his insane blindness in having so little prized, through all the best of life, a love and a nobility which many a man would have given his soul to possess. In the great and terrible awakening through which he had passed in London he had seen himself as he must have appeared to other men, and that hell was too sharp at first for any consolation to visit him, and any least thought or memory of Valentine could only be more exquisite torture. Yet there came a day when, instead of averting his mind from what he could not bear to contemplate, he found himself gazing at it as the one hope in the blackness, as a trembling pagan might see the image of the martyr smile upon him, the martyr his own hands had done to death. Valentine had loved him; what if she loved him still?

It grew in him to conviction, that first dim fancy; it saved him, probably, from madness. Lost, sometimes, like a star which the clouds have blotted out, it always reappeared, and shone at last with almost the light of an inspiration, a proof of the strong and steady influence which the dead can wield. So it came about in the end that, for all the suffering and hopeless regret involved, Gaston, Duc de Trélan, was fast in love with his wife’s memory—so fast that he who had once been “Saint-Charmart”in Paris salons had in Vienna the character of a woman-hater—so fast that he felt, if Valentine knew the depth of his repentance and his pain, she, with her wide charity, would forgive him everything . . . as he doubted not that, in the supreme hour, she had.

But to forgive oneself, that was a different matter. His own stark pride, so interwoven with the fabric of his whole nature, seemed to put that possibility ever further and further from him as the years went by. Yet, if he could not himself forget, it seemed at least that others had done so—till that night at Hennebont when the calumny which he had believed dead had reared its head for an instant. Afterwards it had slept again, apparently, through all the directions he had been obliged to give de Brencourt about Mirabel before despatching him thither, in which he knew quite well that he was risking having the veil torn from the wound. His sacrifice, made to get the gold for the cause to which he had vowed himself, had recoiled on his own head. For days now he had been at the mercy of the Comte, with his knowledge of that slander which was half true; and de Brencourt had behaved like a Red Indian with an enemy at the stake, subjecting him to a deliberate mental torture to which this night’s hazard and bloodshed had been nothing but a relief. It was small consolation to know that he, for his part,—till the coming of the breaking-point—had endured reiterated agony without giving a sign . . . agony not only to his pride but to his love. For it was true—by what diabolical instinct had de Brencourt known it?—that his chief thought when he received the terrible news had been for his own honour . . . though it had long ceased to be true. But that final remark about the want of an heir, the very taunt he had thrown at her himself! Even now, alone and in half darkness though he was, the Duc de Trélan threw his arm over his eyes and groaned aloud. Ah, that look of mortal pain on her face when he had spoken those cruel words—the last he was ever to say to her, the last look he was to carry away.Memini et permaneo!And hadsheremembered, when in the same room she had faced that scene of violence which was but the prelude to the other, the final, the unspeakable, outside the prison door?

It was more than clear to him now what had reawakenedde Brencourt’s enmity; it was that visit to Mirabel where she had lived. That he himself in the past had known nothing of his wife’s acquaintance with the Comte was but natural, seeing how their lives, even before their final separation, had drifted asunder, and it was the fact that de Brencourt should have constituted himself her defender against him, her husband, which had proved so intolerable. His wife’s memory championed against him by a casual admirer! For the vulgar question as to what Valentine’s relations with the Comte de Brencourt might possibly have been had no power over him. It needed not the enshrinement of death to set her reputation above any suspicion of unfaithfulness. It had stood there in life, something of a marvel among so many which were otherwise. He had not that, at least, to rack him.

Now, judging de Brencourt by the standard common to gentlemen, since they had been out together and blood had flowed, he expected a surcease of this bitter hostility. Absurd as it might be, the fact that he, the injured party, had a bullet in his arm signified, by the code, that his honour was satisfied. Since Gaston de Trélan had been reared in that code, it did not seem absurd to him—though damnably inconvenient and painful. Yet, though de Brencourt had shared with him that sacrament of expiation, and had taken his hand after it, his superior was beginning to see that he, at least, had undertaken by the dolmen more than he could carry out. De Brencourt’s conduct had been too deliberate. They would not be able to work together to any profit. He would be obliged, after all, to ask him to resign. For a few days, however, in order to disarm suspicions on the part of his staff, they would have to go on as before. Then he would appoint du Ménars in the Comte’s place. It would be best; for now he must concentrate all his energies on distributing the arms which the treasure would shortly procure from England, where, as already arranged, the Government would buy the gold as it stood, by weight.

Yes, at last he had the means in his power to make his difficult task a success. He would, moreover, have had the satisfaction of having provided these himself. It meant a great deal to him—more than he had once thought anything in life could mean. And lying there, more than alittle feverish, he began to be busy with plans and schemes. Undoubtedly, when the time was fully ripe, as it nearly was, this great uprising of the West would be no petty insurrection. It might change the destinies of France. And he would have no small part in that consummation—he who had wasted all his opportunities, as Valentine had told him at the last, and only too truly. Yet he could not lay any achievement, past or future, any expiation, before her now. She was gone where she could hear neither of Italy nor Finistère.

Gaston de Trélan turned restlessly in the bed. His arm was on fire; he was already between sleep and fever, and, as sometimes happened still, the desperate wound he had taken in his side two and a half years ago, though fully healed, awoke to pain once more. And perhaps because of the ache of the one and the fever of the other, he suddenly saw, as a detached spectator might see in a great picture, the heights and vineyards of Rivoli, the lofty plateau which the French had so victoriously retained, the snowy slopes of Monte Baldo above it, below, the zigzag path from the valley choked with a horrible débris of the slain men and horses and the cannon of Reuss’s pounded column—and under Monte Baldo, himself, among the dead and dying of his own corps, sacrificed in an impossible enterprise, lying as he had fallen in beating off the charge of Junot’s cavalry, the whole side of his white Austrian uniform one great stain of blood. He saw the picture in this curious way for a moment, with the sun going down red behind the mountains of Garda—the next, physical memory caught him up, and he was back in that still conscious body of his, lying there hour after hour in the cold, defeated and forgotten. The stars came out in the January night; down below in the gorge roared the Adige, swollen with the winter rains; he could hear from the smirched and trampled snow a few groans, a prayer or two; he was not sure that he was not groaning himself. . . . And he remembered the three days of that toilsome march round Monte Baldo on which he had been despatched in order to take Joubert in the rear—a project ill-conceived and ill-timed, as he was well aware—his breaking in consequence with his five battalions on the doubly-reinforced foe when the battle was already lost, the hopeless conflict against the whole weightof the French army, with its inevitable close—surrender. Buthehad not surrendered. . . . The cold grew numbing; was this sleep, or death . . .

Finistère’s leader came out of this half coma of reminiscence with a start, and realised where he was, how far removed in time and space from the great Austrian disaster. He supposed that he was a trifle light-headed, for he had really felt that the next thing would be the arrival of those dim, frosty-breathed forms with lanterns, and Schnitterl’s voice, and he would be lifted to a stretcher and to a resumption of that life he thought he had done with at last. Josef had often told him how he had begged to be left there. But no . . .Et permaneo.

After all, he thought now, staring at the moving reflection of the candle on the ceiling, perhaps it was as well that he had not died there in the snow. There was a chance to-day of something better than mere personal heroism. Although nothing, nothing could undo the past nor give him back the dead, yet, if ever they met beyond the grave, he might have some guerdon to lay there at her feet—some tiny sprig of laurel that he could point to and say, “Valentine, I was not wholly what you thought me. . . .”

And for a moment he fancied that he saw her, shadowy and bejewelled, by the bed.

It was Lucien who rode to Lanvennec next morning for the surgeon. M. de Brencourt considered him discreet, and chose him rather than Artamène (who had besides been up all night) or any other of the younger men. But had he known that Lucien, though outwardly respectful and certainly of a fundamental prudence, was finishing in his head as he rode a short but very venomous epistle in verse, beginning, “Artus, le Judas de nos jours!” in which, somewhere near the end, “maître” rhymed with “traître,” he might have selected another messenger.

However, the surgeon came, concerned but unsuspicious, and, assisted by M. Chassin, did his unpleasant work with reasonable speed and deftness, producing at the end of it what he vaguely termed a “projectile” from a region of M. de Kersaint’s forearm which, on the contrary, he described with much exactitude. And while he was binding up the arm in question the Abbé quietly annexed the bullet—“as a souvenir,” he said.

But someone else seemed to be souvenir-hunting that morning. Not long after the Abbé had left his patient to repose and had established himself again in the outer room with his reflections and his breviary, the Comte de Brencourt appeared there.

“Is it out satisfactorily?” he enquired.

“Quite,” replied the priest. “A painful business; but nothing, mercifully, appears to be permanently injured. Yet the surgeon tells me that our leader”—he stressed the words a little—“came very near never having the use of his sword-arm again.”

The Comte looked grave. To do him justice, he had desired last night to kill, not to maim.

“The curious thing,” went on the priest, “is that the bullet is a pistol bullet, though last night M. de Kersaint distinctly said that his assailant shot him with a musket.”

“No, no! The man had a pistol,” said M. de Brencourt. “The Marquis was mistaken.”

“Obviously the man had a pistol,” agreed M. Chassin with serenity. “And not an army pistol either.”

The Comte met his look. “I should rather like to see that bullet,” he observed.

“No doubt,” thought the Abbé, twiddling it in his pocket. “But you are not going to.” And as he made no audible reply to this suggestion the enquirer had to let the subject drop.

“To turn to another question, Abbé,” he said, sitting down, “one has not yet had opportunity to congratulate you on your wonderful success. Allow me to do so now—most heartily.”

“You are generous, Monsieur le Comte,” said the priest, reaching round to place his breviary on the table, and not seeming to notice the proffered hand. “I thank you all the more. Another person ought by rights, however, to be included in your congratulations.”

“Who—not Roland de Céligny, surely?”

“No. His friend the concierge—your friend the concierge.”

“Why do you call her my friend?” asked the Comte with a frown. “She was certainly de Céligny’s, but in no sense mine.”

“No? Well, my friend the concierge, then,” said the priest with a little smile.

De Brencourt’s heart was beating to suffocation as he looked at him. Now, surely, he should learn whether to M. Chassin she were more than a concierge—the main purpose with which he had sought this interview.

“Yes, she was of the greatest service to me,” resumed the priest, “although, indeed, she gave me no active assistance. Poor woman, she had had a sad history.”

“Did she tell it to you?” demanded the Comte quickly.

“Oh, one did not need to betoldit,” replied the Abbé.

But the look of relief which at that most palpably appeared on the Comte’s features had the briefest stay there conceivable, for the aumônier went on to say meditatively, “I am glad to think that I was able to make her some recompense. You remember the ruby necklace mentioned in the plan, Monsieur le Comte?”

“You are not going to say that you gave her that!” exclaimed his companion, starting up in his chair.

“Ah, I see you think it an excessive reward?” commented the Abbé, looking at him enquiringly. “So did M. le Marquis, I fancy, when I told him. But come now, Monsieur le Comte, do you not think that it really was no more than her due, that if ever woman had a right to it, she had . . . and that if M. de Kersaint knew all he would say the same?”

But the Comte was quite speechless. The piercing little eyes held his, and he could feel them boring into his very soul. “If ever woman had a right to it” . . . “if M. de Kersaint knew all.” The Abbé knew—he knew! He would never have given her the necklace else. Had he told the Duc yet?

“Of course,” went on the priest in a lowered tone, lowering that uncomfortable gaze also till it rested on his blunt fingers outspread on his knees, “had there been a Duchess of the house living I should not have felt justified in giving so valuable an heirloom to a concierge. But, under the sad circumstances, I hold that I was absolved, do not you, Monsieur le Comte?”

Oh, curse his maddening and mysterious persistence! Was he playing with him, or was he ignorant after all?

“That is not for me to say,” muttered the Comte thickly. “The matter concerns M. de Kersaint.”

“Very true. Everything about Mme Vidal more nearly concerns M. de Kersaint than anybody else.” He seemed to wait for the Comte to agree or else to ask why, but the Comte could bring out neither assent nor query.

“Since he is most interested in the treasure,” finished the Abbé with an amicable air of explaining his statement. “And, speaking of that treasure, Monsieur le Comte, I feel sure that by now you have penetrated the disguise. The cloak was bound to sit rather awkwardly after—you know what I mean.” He looked at him again.

M. de Brencourt changed colour. “Disguise? Whose disguise? No, I donotknow what you mean!” There was sharp alarm in his tone; whither was this tending?

“Whose disguise?” repeated the priest. “Why, surely, there is only one disguise in question?” He waited asecond and then went on, “The Marquis has perhaps told you himself who he is?”

“No, he has not!” returned M. de Brencourt angrily. “And I do not wish to learn any secrets, if you please, Abbé!” For if he could carry it off with the Abbé and the outside world in general that he had never known who de Kersaint really was, how could he be blamed for not having told him that his wife was alive?

“Very well said, Monsieur le Comte,” remarked M. Chassin in a tone of commendation. “And if I were not sure that, like myself, you know already, I would not speak to you of the identity of M. de Kersaint and the Duc de Trélan.”

“But for Heaven’s sake donotspeak to me of their identity!” cried the Comte, his head reeling as he saw this knowledge being openly thrust upon him. “How do I know—or care—who he is!”

“I am afraid I have done it now,” said the priest placidly “but only because I was sure you had guessed it.”

“How could you be sure?” growled the other. “Did—surely he did not tell you? Only last night he asked me to respect his confidence!”

“Ah!” said the priest. “After you . . . saved his life, no doubt! Well, Monsieur de Brencourt, you can still respect it. And since you do know it—I thought you did—I am sure that as a gentleman you must regret the expressions you used, in ignorance, of M. de Trélan, that night at Hennebont. But you have no doubt made that all right with him.”

“That,” said M. de Brencourt, with hostility, “is a matter which concerns M. de Trélan and myself, not you, Monsieur Chassin.—And as regards confidences, it seems to me that you were going very near betraying one yourself just now. If I hadnotknown . . . are you usually in the habit of doing that?” For now there was a fresh track of alarm; had the priest betrayed this particular confidence to one at Mirabel—told the concierge, even without knowing who she was, that he really came from Mirabel’s master? It was not impossible. He waited in acute tension.

“No,” said the Abbé composedly, “without wishing to belaud myself, it is a point I am rather particular upon.But I assured the Marquis—the Duc—some time ago that he would have to tell you sooner or later. I wonder he did not do so before you went to Mirabel. Did you not guess it then, from the knowledge he displayed of the place?”

“Monsieur l’Abbé,” replied the Comte, with more than irritation, “it does not seem to me to matter much what I guessed or what I did not guess. Enough that I did not impart my speculations to any living soul.”

“No, I am sure you were very careful not to do that!” said the Abbé warmly, and he looked at him harder than ever.

M. de Brencourt got up and went to the window. He must know, this man. And yet . . . did he? He would have told de Trélan at once, if he did; a bullet in the arm would not have prevented the reception of that news. The Comte would almost have given his soul to make sure, but it was so difficult to plumb the extent of the priest’s knowledge without exposing his own. A sort of fascination caused him to recur to the subject of Mirabel, but he approached it this time from a safer side.

“When am I to have an account of your securing of the treasure, Abbé?” he asked, throwing himself down on the window-seat. “Itwasunder the hearth in the sallette, I suppose?”

And presumably his fellow-adventurer felt he owed him this, for he gave him, on this invitation, a fairly circumstantial account of his success at Mirabel and his peregrinations afterwards. The Comte listened from the window with the closest attention. After all,shedid not seem to have played so much part in the business as he had feared. Perhaps——

“But I was glad to leave Mirabel in any case,” finished the narrator with a sigh. “It has a tragic atmosphere—a haunted feeling. Were you not conscious of that, Monsieur le Comte?” And as the Comte, for fear of giving an opening, did not reply, the priest went on, “If it were M. de Trélan’s once more and he were free to go there, I am sure he never would.”

M. de Brencourt could not resist the bait. “No, I should think not!” he broke out in spite of himself. “He would think always of that night—of his wife, alone——”

The priest looked up. “Ah yes, I have heard you in that vein before, Monsieur le Comte,” he interrupted coolly. “Now tell me candidly, for I want to know, since I am not gently born, and can’t understand the refinements of you nobles—is it not a fact that all the aristocrats who emigrated early, as M. de Trélan did, emigrated on a point of honour . . . mistaken, it may be, but still a principle? Why, if it comes to that, Monsieur de Brencourt, you are, I think, an émigré yourself, and I don’t suppose you considered that you were running away?”

“No, that is true,” conceded the Comte somewhat reluctantly. “It was—before it became a matter of safety—a matter of principle.”

“When the Duc emigrated in 1790 it would have taken a very far-sighted person to prophesy the extremities to which the Revolution would go later on. I happen to know, too, that he made a great effort to induce the Duchesse to accompany him. She refused, as it were on a point of honour also. She disapproved of the emigration.”

“And dearly enough she paid for that disapproval,” muttered the Comte.

“Quite true. And don’t you think that M. de Trélan has paid dearly for it too?”

A pause. “He deserved to,” said his companion.

The Abbé made a gesture. “One must make allowances for you, Monsieur. I know that you had the honour of the acquaintance of that noble and unfortunate lady—you told us so—and it has biased you against a man who has been equally unfortunate, and who, for seven years, in the midst of hardships and dangers of his own seeking, has never ceased to suffer the pangs of a remorse which, as I hope for salvation, I consider excessive.”

“You are an eloquent defender, Abbé,” said the Comte de Brencourt, shrugging his shoulders. “You should be at the bar . . . I happen to differ from you. I consider, to put it bluntly, that M. le Duc de Trélan deserves every sting of remorse he has suffered and may still suffer henceforward. I am not for letting a man off so cheaply.”

M. Chassin leant forward. “That was a figure of speech, I presume?” he put in like lightning.

“What do you mean?” asked the Comte, startled.

“You spoke of letting him off—as if you had the power to do it.”

The Comte recovered himself. “Do not be absurd, Abbé!” he said scornfully. “Am I the Judge of all the earth? Of course it was a figure of speech! How couldIabsolve him for what is done and can never be undone? Put his behaviour down, at the best, to mistaken judgment, we have to suffer for our mistakes just as much as for our crimes.”

The Abbé sat back in his chair again. “Since you know that so well, Monsieur de Brencourt,” he said gravely, “it might occur to you that it is a mistake—a dangerous mistake—to play with other people’s remorse. You might conceivably know that torment yourself one day!”

“I’ll take the risk of that,” said the Comte drily, and got up. “Especially as I have no idea what you mean about ‘playing’ with other people’s,” he added, not at all certain what that phrase did mean in the mouth that had uttered it. It was time, at any rate, to end this dangerous interview, which had not told him what he wanted to know. One thing was clear, that if the priest knew Mme Vidal’s secret he would eventually tell the “Marquis de Kersaint,” and after that, no doubt, would come the deluge, and either he, Artus de Brencourt, or his late adversary would really be swept away in it, this time. But if there came no deluge, then M. Chassin did not know.

“If you will excuse me, mon père,” he said, looking down at him, “I must quit this interesting conversation for my duties. Ask M. de . . . Kersaint when you go in to him again, to send for me if he wants me.” And he left the room.

So the Abbé Chassin knew that he did not mean ever to tell Gaston de Trélan that his wife was alive, that he meant to go on withholding the knowledge for his own purpose. And his heart was hardened against M. de Brencourt.

Roland had come. He stood in the ‘nursery’ with an overjoyed friend holding him firmly by either arm.

“But why,” he was now demanding feverishly, “why cannot I see M. le Marquis at once, and get it over?”

For if his sincere penitence had caused his grandfather to dismiss him in the end with a sort of blessing—a remark that he was, if crazy and disobedient, at least no milksop—the youth knew that there was a still more merited penance to be gone through before he could expect a blessinghere. Part indeed of that penance, and perhaps the worst part, he had already been undergoing at Kerlidec—the ashamed realisation of the damage his own wilfulness had caused to his hero’s reputation, in the eyes, too, of one who was always so inexplicably hostile to M. de Kersaint.

“Why?” echoed Artamène. “Because, four nights ago, our revered leader met with an accident in the forest. (Roland gave an exclamation.) The accident took the form of a Blue, who shot him in the arm.”

“But he’s all right,” interpolated the kindhearted Lucien. “They took out the bullet next morning. The Abbé is very strict, however.”

“—And M. de Brencourt shot the Blue,” continued Artamène, “shot him so dead that he was, apparently, blown completely off this planet.”

“You forget,” Lucien reminded him, “that the Comte distinctly stated that he got away.”

“What, after he was dead?” asked Roland.

They looked at him; they drew closer, very close.

“Bend your head, my paladin,” commanded Artamène. And, almost glueing his lips to the attentive ear, he whispered into it, “The question is, whether he ever lived, that Blue!”

“Oh!” exclaimed the Vicomte de Céligny, drawing back.

“Oh, and likewise Ah, and many other vocables!” agreed M. de la Vergne, his eyes bright.

“But that means. . .”

Lucien put a finger on his lip. “We don’t discuss it, Roland. We don’t—ahem—allow our minds to dwell on it. But——”

“ ‘Au clair de la lune,’ ” hummed the Chevalier de la Vergne under his breath. “Two gentlemen, seized with a sudden desire for a walk at half past ten at night. I was on duty that evening, and let them out. Also, I met them returning—in perfect amity, I must confess; most correct. You see, M. le Comte had been so obliging as to bandage the wound which he——”

“Don’t go on, Artamène!” cried Lucien warningly. “Remember that we are here in the region of hypothesis only.”

“Listen to our student. ‘The wound which he so signally avenged,’ was what I was going to say, mon cher. Now, is that statement in the region of hypothesis or of fact? If we knew that, we should know all!”

“But, merciful Heavens, why should they——” began Roland, in tones of horrified amazement.

“My good Roland,” replied Artamène, “though most things are in time revealed to enquiring intelligences, such as M. du Boisfossé’s and mine, the reason for that promenade under the goddess of the night has not yet been disclosed. The infernally bad temper in which M. de Bren—— Chut! here’s the Abbé, come to summon you to the scaffold.”

But that was not exactly M. Chassin’s errand. He had come to say that M. de Kersaint desired Roland to sup with them and to relate his adventures. And if the prodigal should have a little private interview with him afterwards he, the priest, did not fancy that it would be very terrible.

“I expect you have been informed of his mishap,” concluded M. Chassin, glancing at the other young men, neither of whom, by a singular coincidence, met his eye. “Thank God it was not worse.—Now mind you tell him, my child, all about Mirabel—especially about the concierge there.”

So Roland supped with the gods, as Artamène and Lucien had put it. The invitation, with its suggestion of pardon for the past, had pleased and flattered him; the banquet itself he found at first a little embarrassing. To begin with, he had uneasy anticipations of the interview afterwards; and then he found the sight of the Marquis with his arm in a sling oddly shocking, after the revelations made to him downstairs. That support was as inconspicuous as possible, being of black silk; still, there was the leader of Finistère, at the head of the table, unable to use his right hand; and at the other end sat the man who was . . . perhaps . . . responsible for his condition. The priest was placed opposite Roland, and Josef Schnitterl, M. de Kersaint’s bodyservant, waited upon them all; but he was little in the room.

Now if Roland, who possessed only conjectures, felt embarrassed, the little aumônier, dowered though he was with an appearance of placidity and a good appetite, had arrived at the point where he could scarcely bear to see M. de Brencourt in the same room with his foster-brother—much less because of what had passed at the Moulin-aux-Fées than because of the deadly wrong the Comte was doing him now. And, as a matter of fact the Marquis and his chief of staff did not seem to be seeking each other’s society these last few days, though when they were together their relations were of such a successful correctness that speculation downstairs—except with MM. du Boisfossé and de la Vergne—was beginning to languish. No one could have guessed that the priest was thinking, as he looked at the handsome and engaging young face opposite him, “If only Roland knew of her identity!” and that he was preoccupied every hour of the day with the question, “Will she come?” or was on tenterhooks at every communication the Marquis received—for it might be fromher.

When Roland’s first constraint was over, and the meal had proceeded a little way, the Marquis enjoined the young man to give a most particular account of all his doings. Roland assumed the air of obeying to the full, though as a matter of fact he contrived to make his narrative begin with his arrival in Paris. But this the Marquis would not have.

“You can only earn my full pardon, Roland,” he said, looking at him quizzically, “by an equally full confession of your sins—and by revealing the names of all your accomplices!”

The Comte and the Abbé both exclaimed at this. “No gentleman could consent to receive his pardon on such terms,” declared the former.

“It is true,” admitted the inquisitor, “that I know Roland’s partners in guilt already. The one I have already dealt with; the other, I am afraid, lies outside my jurisdiction.”

“Ah, there was another, was there?” asked the Abbé, looking amusedly across at poor Roland, who, blushing, was alternately studying the tablecloth and sending appealing glances at his leader. “I know of one. Who was the other? Not our staid Lucien, surely?”

“No,” replied M. de Kersaint, smiling, “not Lucien. I have strong reasons to suspect another member of Artamène’s family, no less daring than himself, and, presumably, even more inspiring.—But enough that I know the name of this . . . person.—Go on, Roland; after all we will dispense with the meetings of the conspirators at La Vergne. Continue from your leaving that nest of plotters.”

He was in better spirits than he had been for days; and how should Roland guess with what pleasure he was looking forward to an interview after supper where, after all, he should let the penitent off rather easily? Thankfully escaping from the dangerous neighbourhood of Mlle de la Vergne the young man carried on his narrative up to his falling unconscious at the foot of the statue of Mercury in the park of Mirabel.

M. de Kersaint leant back in his chair. “We now come, I think, to the really romantic part of the story, do we not? Enter Mme Vidal, I believe.”

As Roland embarked on the entry of Mme Vidal into his recital the Abbé and M. de Brencourt became very silent. (But Roland noticed nothing;hisaudience was M. de Kersaint.)

Almost immediately, however, the latter interrupted him. “What was she like to look at, this good angel?” he enquired, laying down his fork. “She was not young, that I have gathered.”

Roland was rather at a loss. “I am afraid I am not very good at description, sir. But M. le Comte or M. l’Abbé”—he turned towards them—“surely you have heard all about her appearance from them.”

“No, indeed I have not,” replied the Marquis. “Rather remarkably, they neither of them seem able to describe her.”

“Let us have your attempt, then, Roland,” said the Abbé. A vista of blest possibilities was opening out before him. The same thing was happening to the Comte de Brencourt . . . only the possibilities were not blest.

Roland tried, but possibly through the hostile influence of the gentleman at the bottom of the table he failed to achieve anything recognisable.

“ ‘Tall, fair hair going grey, blue-grey eyes’—that does not advance us much,” observed M. de Kersaint with truth. “It is like the passport descriptions, ‘bouche moyenne,’ and the rest. Never mind Mme Vidal’s appearance, then, Roland. But since you of the three had the most intimate acquaintance with her, tell us, at least, what impression her personality made on you. For though M. le Comte does not seem to find the presence at Mirabel of a concierge with Royalist sympathies extraordinary, I must say that I do.”

“I said, Marquis, if I remember,” interposed M. de Brencourt rather hoarsely, “that I thought her sympathies need not have been so entirely Royalist as you assume. She was a woman, M. de Céligny an interesting young man, helpless and wounded . . . que sais-je? It was enough to appeal to any woman’s heart.”

Roland, embarrassed at hearing himself described in these terms, and in such an unpleasant voice, broke in,

“Oh but, indeed, Monsieur le Comte, she had Royalist sympathies. At least she was the widow of a poor Royalist gentleman . . . for of course, Messieurs, you saw at once that she was a lady. Indeed, I could not quite understand why she accepted the post, for she certainly seemed out of place in it. Didn’t you think so, Messieurs?”

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