g to sympathize with him; to the baseness of
stealing his child from the man who had himself stolen it--he knew not
why; to the foul meanness of accompanying her menial--herself masked
to prevent detection--and urging him on to murder; herself, by
complicity, a murderess! And as he so pondered, he reflected also with
what eager, cruel pleasure--for he knew now, and almost shuddered at
knowing, that the wrongs inflicted on him had turned him toward
cruelty--he would tell her of how her vile brother had died before his
eyes.

So, determinately, he rode on, nearing Rambouillet, yet feeling as
though sometimes he could go no further, must drop from his horse into
the road. In the week since he escaped from Bayeux he had been feeling
that day by day he was becoming ill, that all he had gone through--the
immersion in the sea, the intensity of his excitement at Bayeux, his
long rides and exposure to the weather--was like ere long to overwhelm
him. Sometimes for hours he rode almost unconscious of what was
passing around him; he burned with a consuming fever, his limbs and
head ached and his thirst was terrible.

Yet, urged on and on by the object he had in view, he still went
forward until, at last, he halted outside the town he had now come to,
beneath the walls of the old castle of Rambouillet.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE FLEUR-DE-LIS.

The hot sun of those last days of May beat down on the white roads and
the orchards and the pastures surrounding the town of Rambouillet, and
shone also with unpleasant strength upon La Baronne de Louvigny, being
driven back to her house within the walls. And madame's aristocratic
countenance, handsome as she was, showed signs of irritation--perhaps
from the effects of the heat, perhaps from other things--while her
dark eyes, glancing out from under the hood of the summer _caleche_ in
which she was lying back, looked as though they belonged to a woman
who was not, at the present moment at least, in the best of humours.

She was still a very young woman and was also a widow, the baron
having been killed in a duel some few years ago, which had not grieved
her in the least, since he was an old man who had married her for her
good looks and, possibly, her more aristocratic connections than he
himself possessed; yet, in spite of these advantages, there were
things in her existence which annoyed her. Among these things was, for
instance, one which was extremely irritating--namely, that for