. And I ride in haste. You have heard the news?"

"News! no," exclaimed the man, while even the peasants going to their
toil pricked up their ears. "What news?"

"Tourville's fleet is ruined--burned--by the English! Stop me not. I
ride to carry it. By orders!"

"_Mon Dieu!_" the man exclaimed, "by the English. Tourville defeated
by them? It is impossible!"

"It is true," while as he spoke--still moving across the now lowered
drawbridge as he did so--one of the peasants, an old woman, wailed:
"My boy was there--in the Ambitieux! Is that burnt?"

"I do not know, good woman," he replied, unwilling to tell the poor
old creature the worst. "I must not tarry."

And in a moment he had put the horse to the gallop. He had left Bayeux
behind. Out of the jaws of death he had escaped once more. "But," he
asked himself, "for how long? How long?"

* * * * *

That danger which he had escaped so soon after setting foot in France
was not again equalled on the road, and a week later he neared the old
fortified town of Rambouillet. He had progressed by obscure ways to
reach it, avoiding every large city or town to which he had
approached, and skirting, either on the north or south, Caen, Evreux,
and Bernay. He was drawing nearer to Troyes now, nearer to where his
child was, if still alive, nearer to the satisfaction he meant to have
by his denunciation of the treachery of Aurelie de Roquemaure.

Yet, as he so progressed, he asked himself of what use would such
denunciation be--of what importance in comparison with the regaining
of Dorine? That was all in all to him; the supreme desire of his life
now--to regain her, to escape out of France once more; to earn
subsistence sufficient for them both in England. Beyond that, the
satisfaction of taxing Mademoiselle de Roquemaure with her
treachery--the treachery of, with her mother, appearing to sympathize
with him when they first met at the manoir, of expressing that
sympathy again in Paris during their brief encounter outside the
Louvre, of her false and lying words to Boussac--would be little
worth. Yet, small as that satisfaction would be, something within told
him he must obtain it; must stand face to face with her and look into
those clear gray eyes that had the appearance of being so honest and
were so false; must ask her why, since she so coveted all that his and
his child's life might deprive her of, she had stooped to the
duplicity of pretendin