her cousin
Kercadiou.

"I almost feared you would not keep your word," she said. "It was
unjust. But then I hardly hoped that you would succeed in bringing
him." And her glance, gentle, and smiling welcome upon him, indicated
Andre-Louis.

The young man made answer with formal gallantry.

"The memory of you, madame, is too deeply imprinted on my heart for any
persuasions to have been necessary."

"Ah, the courtier!" said madame, and abandoned him her hand. "We are to
have a little talk, Andre-Louis," she informed him, with a gravity that
left him vaguely ill at ease.

They sat down, and for a while the conversation was of general matters,
chiefly concerned, however, with Andre-Louis, his occupations and his
views. And all the while madame was studying him attentively with those
gentle, wistful eyes, until again that sense of uneasiness began to
pervade him. He realized instinctively that he had been brought here for
some purpose deeper than that which had been avowed.

At last, as if the thing were concerted--and the clumsy Lord of Gavrillac
was the last man in the world to cover his tracks--his godfather rose
and, upon a pretext of desiring to survey the garden, sauntered through
the windows on to the terrace, over whose white stone balustrade the
geraniums trailed in a scarlet riot. Thence he vanished among the
foliage below.

"Now we can talk more intimately," said madame. "Come here, and sit
beside me." She indicated the empty half of the settee she occupied.

Andre-Louis went obediently, but a little uncomfortably. "You know," she
said gently, placing a hand upon his arm, "that you have behaved very
ill, that your godfather's resentment is very justly founded?"

"Madame, if I knew that, I should be the most unhappy, the most
despairing of men." And he explained himself, as he had explained
himself on Sunday to his godfather. "What I did, I did because it was
the only means to my hand in a country in which justice was paralyzed by
Privilege to make war upon an infamous scoundrel who had killed my best
friend--a wanton, brutal act of murder, which there was no law to punish.
And as if that were not enough--forgive me if I speak with the utmost
frankness, madame--he afterwards debauched the woman I was to have
married."

"Ah, mon Dieu!" she cried out.

"Forgive me. I know that it is horrible. You perceive, perhaps, what
I suffered, how I came to be driven. That last affair of which I
am guilty--the riot