ted him living and I hate him dead!"

He tore open his frock coat and pushed the flat brimmed silk hat to the
back of his head and waved his lemon kids in his old extravagant
gestures.

"What did the stolen ten thousand pounds matter to him? It mattered
prison to Rushworth, Joanna's father--think of the horror of it! She
would have died from the disgrace--her mother too. And the devil jested,
Asticot. He talked of Rushworth being smitten with the slings and black
arrows of outrageous fortune. _Nom de Dieu_, I could have strangled him!
But what could I do? Two years! To go out of her life for two years as
if I had been struck dead! Yet after two years I could come back and say
what I chose. I signed the contract. I went out of the house. I kept my
word. _Noblesse oblige._ I was Gaston de Nerac. I came back to Paris. I
worked night and day for eighteen months. I had genius. I had hope. I
had youth. I had faith. She would never marry the Comte de Verneuil. She
would not marry anybody. I counted the days. Meanwhile he posed as the
saviour of Simon Rushworth. He poisoned Joanna's mind against me. He
lied, invented infamies. This I have heard lately. He confessed it all
to her before the devil took him as a play-fellow. Of one who had so
cruelly treated her all things were possible. She half believed them. At
last he told her I was dead. An acquaintance had found me in a Paris
hospital and had paid for my funeral. She had no reason for disbelief.
He pressed his suit. Her father and mother urged her--the fool Rushworth
soon afterwards came to another crisis, and de Verneuil again stepped in
and demanded Joanna as the price. She is gentle. She has a heart
tenderer than that of any woman who ever lived. One day I heard she had
married him. My God! It is thirteen years ago."

He poured some water into the syrup glass and gulped it down. I remained
silent. I had never seen him give way to violent emotion--save
once--when he broke the fiddle over Mr. Pogson's head.

Presently he said with a whimsical twist of his lips:

"You may have heard me speak of a crusader's mace."

"Yes, Master."

"That's when I used it. I had an inspiration," he remarked quietly.

"Master," said I after a while, "if Madame de Verneuil believed you to
be dead, it must have been a shock to her when she saw you alive at
Aix-les-Bains."

"She learned soon after her marriage that her husband had been mistaken.
Her mother had caught sight of me in Venic