e gratifying of his desires. He sends the
Marquis, Marcel de Bardelys to Lavedan on the same business. No doubt
he attributes Chatellerault's failure to clumsiness, and he has decided
this time to choose a man famed for courtly address and gifted with such
arts of dalliance that he cannot fail but enmesh my daughter in them. It
is a great compliment that he pays us in sending hither the handsomest
and most accomplished gentleman of all his Court--so fame has it--yet it
is a compliment of whose flattery I am not sensible. Bardelys goes hence
as empty-handed as went Chatellerault. Let him but show his face, and
my daughter journeys to Auch again. Am I not well advised, Monsieur de
Lesperon?"

"Why, yes," I answered slowly, after the manner of one who deliberates,
"if you are persuaded that your conclusions touching Bardelys are
correct."

"I am more than persuaded. What other business could bring him to
Lavedan?"

It was a question that I did not attempt to answer. Haply he did not
expect me to answer it. He left me free to ponder another issue of this
same business of which my mind was become very full. Chatellerault had
not dealt fairly with me. Often, since I had left Paris, had I marvelled
that he came to be so rash as to risk his fortune upon a matter that
turned upon a woman's whim. That I possessed undeniable advantages
of person, of birth, and of wealth, Chatellerault could not have
disregarded. Yet these, and the possibility that they might suffice to
engage this lady's affections, he appeared to have set at naught when he
plunged into that rash wager.

He must have realized that because he had failed was no reason to
presume that I must also fail. There was no consequence in such an
argument, and often, as I have said, had I marvelled during the past
days at the readiness with which Chatellerault had flung down the gage.
Now I held the explanation of it. He counted upon the Vicomte de Lavedan
to reason precisely as he was reasoning, and he was confident that no
opportunities would be afforded me of so much as seeing this beautiful
and cold Roxalanne.

It was a wily trap he had set me, worthy only of a trickster.

Fate, however, had taken a hand in the game, and the cards were redealt
since I had left Paris. The terms of the wager permitted me to choose
any line of action that I considered desirable; but Destiny, it seemed,
had chosen for me, and set me in a line that should at least suffice
to overcome t