oner."

Did I not know it? I never waited to answer him, but, striding across
the room, I held out my hand over the table--to Chatellerault.

"My dear Comte," I cried, "you are most choicely met."

I would have added more, but there was something in his attitude that
silenced me. He had turned half from me, and stood now, hand on hip, his
great head thrown back and tilted towards his shoulder, his expression
one of freezing and disdainful wonder.

Now, if his attitude filled me with astonishment and apprehension,
consider how these feelings were heightened by his words.

"Monsieur de Lesperon, I can but express amazement at your effrontery.
If we have been acquainted in the past, do you think that is a
sufficient reason for me to take your hand now that you have placed
yourself in a position which renders it impossible for His Majesty's
loyal servants to know you?"

I fell back a pace, my mind scarce grasping yet the depths of this
inexplicable attitude.

"This to me, Chatellerault?" I gasped.

"To you?" he blazed, stirred to a sudden passion. "What else did you
expect, Monsieur de Lesperon?"

I had it in me to give him the lie, to denounce him then for a low,
swindling trickster. I understood all at once the meaning of this
wondrous make-believe. From Saint-Eustache he had gathered the mistake
there was, and for his wager's sake he would let the error prevail, and
hurry me to the scaffold. What else might I have expected from the man
that had lured me into such a wager--a wager which the knowledge he
possessed had made him certain of winning? Would he who had cheated at
the dealing of the cards neglect an opportunity to cheat again during
the progress of the game?

As I have said, I had it in my mind to cry out that he lied--that I was
not Lesperon; that he knew I was Bardelys. But the futility of such an
outcry came to me simultaneously with the thought of it. And, I fear
me, I stood before him and his satellites--the mocking Saint-Eustache
amongst them--a very foolish figure.

"There is no more to be said," I murmured at last.

"But there is!" he retorted. "There is much more to be said. You shall
render yet an account of your treason, and I am afraid, my poor rebel,
that your comely head will part company with your shapely body. You and
I will meet at Toulouse. What more is to be said will be said in the
Tribunal there."

A chill encompassed me. I was doomed, it seemed. This man, ruling the
province