the creaking stairs and finally on the floor below. After which
there came the sound of the opening and shutting of a door, the dragging
of a chair across a wooden floor, and nothing more.

All was still in the house at last. The old-fashioned clock downstairs
struck half-past two.

With a smothered cry of angry contempt Clyffurde seized on the papers
that lay scattered on the table and crushed them up in his hand with a
gesture of passionate wrath.

Then he strode up to the window, threw open the rickety casement and let
the pure cold air of night pour into the room and dissipate the
atmosphere of cowardice, of falsehood and of unworthy love that still
seemed to hang there where M. le Marquis de St. Genis had basely
bargained for his own ends, and outraged the very name of Love by
planning base deeds in its name.

CHAPTER VI

THE CRIME

I

Victor de Marmont had spent that same night in wearisome agitation. His
mortification and disappointment would not allow him to rest.

He had brought his squad of cavalry up as far as St. Priest, which lies
a little off the main road, about half-way between Lyons and the scene
of de Marmont's late discomfiture. Here he and his men had spent the
night, only to make a fresh start early the next morning--back for
Grenoble--seeing that M. le Comte d'Artois with thirty or forty thousand
troops was even now at Lyons.

When, an hour after leaving St. Priest, the little troop came upon a
solitary horseman, riding a heavy carriage horse with a postillion's
bridle, de Marmont at first had no other thought save that of malicious
pleasure at recognising the man, whom just now he hated more cordially
than any other man in the world.

M. de St. Genis--for indeed it was he--was peremptorily challenged and
questioned, and his wrath and impotent attempts at arrogance greatly
delighted de Marmont.

To make oneself actively unpleasant to a rival is apt to be a very
pleasurable sensation. Victor had an exceedingly disagreeable half-hour
to avenge and to declare St. Genis a prisoner of war, to order his
removal to Grenoble pending the Emperor's pleasure, to command him to
be silent when he desired to speak was so much soothing balsam spread
upon the wounds which his own pride had suffered at Brestalou last
Sunday eve.

It was not until a casual remark from the sergeant under his command
caused him to notice the bulging pockets of St. Genis' coat, that Victor
thought to give the