but I
bethought myself of you--of you, Jocelyne--and"----

"Philip! Monseigneur," stammered the astonished girl. "You--here--and a
fugitive!"

"Do you not know me?" said the fugitive to Dame Perrotte, who had risen
from her chair, and stood staring at him as if with a return of troubled
intellect.

"Not know you?" exclaimed the old woman rising. "I know you well, Philip
de la Mole! And is it you, the Catholic, who seek a shelter beneath the
roof of the proscribed and outlawed Huguenot?"

"But it is in the cause of your religion that I have conspired, my good
woman, and that I am now compelled to fly," replied La Mole; "it was for
one, who, as chief of your party, would have espoused your quarrel, and
re-established your influence in the land."

"Ay, for your master, the shallow Duke of Alencon," responded Perrotte
coldly. "False, hollow ambition all! And ye call that the cause of
religion--Mockery! Yes, I know you well, Philip de la Mole, who in the
hour of bloodshed," she continued, growing more and more excited, "could
approve the hellish deed, and who now can babble of sacrifice and
self-offering in the cause of our religion."

"You belie me, woman," said La Mole proudly.

"Yes, I know you, Philip de la Mole," pursued the old woman with knitted
brows and flashing eyes; "you, who, to amuse your hours of idleness,
could talk of love to a poor trusting girl, heedless how you destroyed
her peace of mind, had you but your pastime and your jest of it."

"Grandmother!" cried Jocelyne in the bitterest distress.

"It was he, then!" exclaimed Alayn, advancing upon the fugitive
nobleman, with the gun-barrel raised in his arm.

"If you love me, forbear!" screamed his cousin, flinging herself before
him.

"I had hoped to have found shelter among honest hearts, whom misfortune
should have taught pity," said the fugitive proudly, and unmoved; "and I
have erred--unjust hate, prejudice, inhospitality, are the only virtues
practised beneath this roof. I will again brave the danger, and seek
elsewhere that kindly feeling I find not here. Jocelyne, my sweet pretty
Jocelyne, farewell!"

With these words La Mole moved towards the door. The old woman regarded
him motionless, and with the same cloud of irritation on her brow. Alayn
seemed equally inclined to prosecute his first hostile intention; but
Jocelyne sprang after the retreating nobleman and caught him by the arm.

"Grandmother," she said, drawing herself up to her f