Sautron she would have laughed less confidently at her
father's gloomy forebodings. But she was destined never to know, which
indeed was the cruellest punishment of all. She was to attribute all the
evil that of a sudden overwhelmed her, the shattering of all the future
hopes she had founded upon the Marquis and the sudden disintegration
of the Binet Troupe, to the wicked interference of that villain
Scaramouche.

She had this much justification that possibly, without the warning
from M. de Sautron, the Marquis would have found in the events of
that evening at the Theatre Feydau a sufficient reason for ending an
entanglement that was fraught with too much unpleasant excitement,
whilst the breaking-up of the Binet Troupe was most certainly the result
of Andre-Louis' work. But it was not a result that he intended or even
foresaw.

So much was this the case that in the interval after the second act,
he sought the dressing-room shared by Polichinelle and Rhodomont.
Polichinelle was in the act of changing.

"I shouldn't trouble to change," he said. "The piece isn't likely to go
beyond my opening scene of the next act with Leandre."

"What do you mean?"

"You'll see." He put a paper on Polichinelle's table amid the
grease-paints. "Cast your eye over that. It's a sort of last will and
testament in favour of the troupe. I was a lawyer once; the document
is in order. I relinquish to all of you the share produced by my
partnership in the company."

"But you don't mean that you are leaving us?" cried Polichinelle in
alarm, whilst Rhodomont's sudden stare asked the same question.

Scaramouche's shrug was eloquent. Polichinelle ran on gloomily: "Of
course it was to have been foreseen. But why should you be the one to
go? It is you who have made us; and it is you who are the real head
and brains of the troupe; it is you who have raised it into a real
theatrical company. If any one must go, let it be Binet--Binet and his
infernal daughter. Or if you go, name of a name! we all go with you!"

"Aye," added Rhodomont, "we've had enough of that fat scoundrel."

"I had thought of it, of course," said Andre-Louis. "It was not vanity,
for once; it was trust in your friendship. After to-night we may
consider it again, if I survive."

"If you survive?" both cried.

Polichinelle got up. "Now, what madness have you in mind?" he asked.

"For one thing I think I am indulging Leandre; for another I am pursuing
an old quarrel."

The