his kindly heart for her and obscured every other
emotion. That same pity he had felt for her before, a sweet, protecting
pity--gentle sister to fiercer, madder love which had perhaps never been
so strong as it was at this hour when, for the second time, he was about
to make a supreme sacrifice for her.

That the sacrifice must be made, he already knew: knew it even when
first St. Genis' name escaped her lips. She loved St. Genis and she
believed in him, and he, Clyffurde, who loved her with every fibre of
his being, with all the passionate ardour of his lonely heart, could
serve her no better than by accepting this awful humiliation which she
put upon him. If he could have justified himself now, he would not have
done it, not while she loved St. Genis, and he--Clyffurde--was less than
nothing to her.

What did it matter after all what she thought of him? He would have
given his life for her love, but short of that everything else was
anyhow intolerable--her contempt, her hatred? what mattered? since
to-night anyhow he would pass out of her life for ever.

He was ready for the sacrifice--sacrifice of pride, of honour, of peace
of mind--but he did want to know that that sacrifice would be really
needed and that when made it would not be in vain: and in order to gain
this end he put a final question to her:

"One moment, Mademoiselle," he said, "before you go will you tell me one
thing at least; was it M. de St. Genis himself who accused me of
treachery?"

"There is no reason why I should deny it, Sir," she replied coldly. "It
was M. de St. Genis himself who gave to my father and to me a full
account of the interview which he had with you at a lonely inn, some few
kilometres from Lyons, and less than two hours after we had been
shamefully robbed on the highroad of money that belonged to the King."

"And did M. de St. Genis tell you, Mademoiselle, that I purposed to use
that money for mine own ends?"

"Or for those of the Corsican," she retorted impatiently. "I care not
which. Yes! Sir, M. de St. Genis told me that with his own lips and when
I had heard the whole miserable story of your duplicity and your
treachery, I--a helpless, deceived and feeble woman--did then and there
register a vow that I too would do you some grievous wrong one day--a
wrong as great as you had done not only to the King of France but to me
and to my father who trusted you as we would a friend. What you did
to-night has of course altered th