I can make no exception in your favour. That is to interfere
in my concerns and presume to dictate to me the manner in which I shall
conduct them. Be good enough to bear that in your memory."

In a moment he was all servility. The sneer passed out of his face, the
arrogance out of his demeanour. He became as full of smiles and capers
as the meanest sycophant.

"You will forgive me, monsieur!" he cried, spreading his hands, and with
the humblest smile in the world. "I perceive that I have taken a great
liberty; yet you have misunderstood its purport. I sought to sound you
touching the wisdom of a step upon which I have ventured."

"That is, monsieur?" I asked, throwing back my head, with the scent of
danger breast high.

"I took it upon myself to-day to mention the fact that you are alive and
well to one who had a right, I thought, to know of it, and who is coming
hither tomorrow."

"That was a presumption you may regret," said I between my teeth. "To
whom do you impart this information?"

"To your friend, Monsieur de Marsac," he answered, and through his
mask of humility the sneer was again growing apparent. "He will be here
tomorrow," he repeated.

Marsac was that friend of Lesperon's to whose warm commendation of
the Gascon rebel I owed the courtesy and kindness that the Vicomte de
Lavedan had meted out to me since my coming.

Is it wonderful that I stood as if frozen, my wits refusing to work and
my countenance wearing, I doubt not, a very stricken look? Here was one
coming to Lavedan who knew Lesperon--one who would unmask me and say
that I was an impostor. What would happen then? A spy they would of a
certainty account me, and that they would make short work of me I never
doubted. But that was something that troubled me less than the opinion
Mademoiselle must form. How would she interpret what I had said that
day? In what light would she view me hereafter?

Such questions sped like swift arrows through my mind, and in their
train came a dull anger with myself that I had not told her everything
that afternoon. It was too late now. The confession would come no longer
of my own free will, as it might have done an hour ago, but would be
forced from me by the circumstances that impended. Thus it would no
longer have any virtue to recommend it to her mercy.

"The news seems hardly welcome, Monsieur de Lesperon," said Roxalanne
in a voice that was inscrutable. Her tone stirred me, for it betokened
suspicion al