"

So this was the gentleman I was to see! A stable boy had taken his
reins, and he leapt nimbly to the ground. Into my range of vision
hobbled now the enfeebled gentleman whom earlier I had noticed.

"My dear Stanislas!" he cried, "I cannot tell you how rejoiced I am to
see you!" and he approached Marsac with arms that were opened as if to
embrace him.

The newcomer surveyed him a moment in wonder, with eyes grown dull.
Then abruptly raising his hand, he struck the fellow on the breast, and
thrust him back so violently that but for the stable-boy's intervention
he had of a certainty fallen. With a look of startled amazement on his
haggard face, the invalid regarded his assailant.

As for Marsac, he stepped close up to him.

"What is this?" he cried harshly. "What is this make-believe feebleness?
That you are pale, poltroon, I do not wonder! But why these tottering
limbs? Why this assumption of weakness? Do you look to trick me by these
signs?"

"Have you taken leave of your senses?" exclaimed the other, a note of
responsive anger sounding in his voice. "Have you gone mad, Stanislas?"

"Abandon this pretence," was the contemptuous answer. "Two days ago at
Lavedan, my friend, they informed me how complete was your recovery;
from what they told us, it was easy to guess why you tarried there
and left us without news of you. That was my reason, as you may have
surmised, for writing to you. My sister has mourned you for dead--was
mourning you for dead whilst you sat at the feet of your Roxalanne and
made love to her among the roses of Lavedan."

"Lavedan?" echoed the other slowly. Then, raising his voice, "what the
devil are you saying?" he blazed. "What do I know of Lavedan?"

In a flash it had come to me who that enfeebled gentleman was. Rodenard,
the blunderer, had been at fault when he had said that Lesperon had
expired. Clearly he could have no more than swooned; for here, in the
flesh, was Lesperon himself, the man I had left for dead in that barn by
Mirepoix.

How or where he had recovered were things that at the moment did not
exercise my mind--nor have I since been at any pains to unravel the
mystery of it; but there he was, and for the moment that fact was
all-sufficing. What complications would come of his presence Heaven
alone could foretell.

"Put an end to this play-acting!" roared the savage Marsac. "It will
avail you nothing. My sister's tears may have weighed lightly with you,
but you shall pay