usness had made them villains. Upon that covetousness did
their villainy rest, and he need fear from them no wanton ruthlessness
that should endanger their chance of profit.

He trudged on, reassured. He had been a fool so to give way to fear; as
great a fool as he had been when he had laid hands on Marius to quell
his excessive amorousness. Dieu! Was he bewitched? What ailed him? Again
he paused there in the night to think the situation out.

A dozen thoughts, all centering about Valerie, came crowding in upon
his brain, till in the end a great burst of laughter--the laughter of a
madman almost, eerie and terrific as it rang upon the silent night broke
from his parted lips. That brief moment of introspection had revealed
him to himself, and the revelation had fetched that peal of mocking
laughter from him.

He realized now, at last, that not because the Queen had ordered him to
procure Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye's enlargement had he submitted
to assume a filthy travesty, to set his neck in jeopardy, to play
the lackey and the spy. It was because something in Valerie's eyes,
something in her pure, lily face had moved him to it; and simultaneously
had come the thought of the relation in which she stood to that man at
La Rochette whose life he now sought to save for her, and it had stabbed
him with a bitterness no misfortune, no failure yet had brought him.

He trudged on, knowing himself for what he was a fool who, after close
upon forty years of a strenuous life in which no petticoat had played a
part, was come under the spell of a pair of innocent eyes belonging to a
child almost young enough to have been his daughter.

He despised himself a little for his weakness; he despised himself for
his apostasy from the faith that had governed his life--the faith to
keep himself immune from the folly to which womanhood had driven so many
a stout man.

And yet, mock himself, despise himself as he would, a great tenderness,
a great desire grew strong in his soul that night as he trudged on
toward distant Voiron. Mile after mile her image kept him company, and
once, when he had left Voreppe behind him, the greater portion of his
journey done, some devil whispered in his ear that he was weary; that
he would be over-weary on the morrow for any ride to La Rochette. He had
done all that mortal man could do; let him rest to-morrow whilst Marius
and Fortunio accomplished by Florimond what the fever had begun.

A cold perspiratio