or tired his arm. They would have been almost glad to hear that it was
so, but he shook her off impatiently, and the next moment had a view of
the freshly skinned over, but still wide and gaping gash on his arm. He
looked for a brief space, and said, 'It is a sword-cut.'

'Truly it is, lad,' said Sir Marmaduke, 'and a very bad one, happily
whole! Is this the first time you have seen it?'

He did not answer, but covered his eyes with his hand, and presently
burst out again, 'Then it is no dream? Sir--have I been to France?'

'Yes, my son, you have,' said Sir Marmaduke, gently, and with more
tenderness than could have been looked for; 'but what passed there is
much better viewed as a dream, and cast behind your back.'

Berenger had, while he spoke, taken up the same little mirror where he
had once admired himself; and as he beheld the scar and plaster that
disfigured his face, with a fresh start of recollection, muttered over,
'_"Barbouiller ce chien de visage"_--ay, so he said. I felt the pistol's
muzzle touch! Narcisse! Has God had mercy on me? I prayed Him. Ah! _"le
baiser d'Eustacie"_--so he said. I was waiting in the dark. Why did he
come instead of her? Oh! father, where is she?'

It was a sore task, but Sir Marmaduke went bravely and bluntly, though
far from unkindly, to the point: 'She remains with her friends in
France.'

There the youth's look of utter horror and misery shocked and startled
them all, and he groaned rather than said, 'Left there! Left to them!
What have I done to leave her there?'

'Come, Berenger, this will not serve,' said his mother, trying to rouse
and cheer him. 'You should rather be thankful that when you had been so
foully ensnared by their wiles, good Osbert brought you off with your
life away from those bloody doings. Yes, you may thank Heaven and
Osbert, for you are the only one of them living now.'

'Of whom, mother?'

'Of all the poor Protestants that like you were deluded by the pack of
murderers over there. What,'--fancying it would exhilarate him to hear
of his own escape--'you knew not that the bloody Guise and the Paris
cut-throats rose and slew every Huguenot they could lay hands on? Why,
did not the false wench put off your foolish runaway project for the
very purpose of getting you into the trap on the night of the massacre?'

He looked with a piteous, appealing glance from her to Cecily and Sir
Marmaduke, as if in hopes that they would contradict.

'Too true, my