d out on him again; and when
he spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of the previous guttural
convulsion, though his voice was still unsteady with repressed emotion.

"I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you must pardon the
caprices of necessity. If you propose to remain in the room, I beg that
you will not look at me while I am drinking."

Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he disliked, the General
sharply turned his back upon him. The stranger thereupon drew a white
handkerchief from his pocket and wound it about his right hand. Then
he seized the carafe and emptied it at a draught. The Marquis, staring
vacantly into the tall mirror across the room, without a thought of
breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger's figure distinctly
reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and saw, too, a red stain
suddenly appear through the folds of the white bandage. The man's hands
were steeped in blood.

"Ah! you saw me!" cried the other. He had drunk off the water and
wrapped himself again in his cloak, and now scrutinized the General
suspiciously. "It is all over with me! Here they come!"

"I don't hear anything," said the Marquis.

"You have not the same interest that I have in listening for sounds in
the air."

"You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a state?"
queried the General, not a little disturbed by the color of those broad,
dark patches staining his visitor's cloak.

"Yes, a duel; you have it," said the other, and a bitter smile flitted
over his lips.

As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound of galloping
horses; but so faint as yet, that it was the merest dawn of a sound. The
General's trained ear recognized the advance of a troop of regulars.

"That is the gendarmerie," said he.

He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own involuntary
indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the salon. He had scarcely
laid the key of the room above upon the chimney-piece when the hoof
beats sounded louder and came swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The
General felt a shiver of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at
the house door; a few words were exchanged among the men, and one
of them dismounted and knocked loudly. There was no help for it; the
General went to open the door. He could scarcely conceal his inward
perturbation at the sight of half a dozen gendarmes outside, the metal
rims of their caps gleaming like silver