it he was talking again. He had changed his tactics.

"This is my home," he said, "where I might expect shelter and comfort.
You make me an outcast."

Antoinette disengaged herself from Helene with a cry, but he turned away
from her and shrugged.

"A stranger would have fared better. Perhaps you will have more
consideration for a stranger. There is a French ship at the Terre aux
Boeufs in the English Turn, which sails to-night. I appeal to you, Mr.
Ritchie,"--he was still talking in French--"I appeal to you, who are a
man of affairs,"--and he swept me a bow,--"if a captain would risk taking
a fugitive to France for eight hundred livres? Pardieu, I could get no
farther than the Balize for that. Monsieur," he added meaningly, "you
have an interest in this. There are two of us to go."

The amazing effrontery of this move made me gasp. Yet it was neither the
Vicomtesse nor myself who answered him. We turned by common impulse to
Antoinette, and she was changed. Her breath came quickly, her eyes
flashed, her anger made her magnificent.

"It is not true," she cried, "you know it is not true."

He lifted his shoulders and smiled.

"You are my brother, and I am ashamed to acknowledge you. I was willing
to give my last sou, to sell my belongings, to take from the poor to help
you--until you defamed a good man. You cannot make me believe," she
cried, unheeding the color that surged into her cheeks, "you cannot make
me believe that he would use this money. You cannot make me believe it."

"Let us do him the credit of thinking that he means to repay it," said
Auguste.

Antoinette's eyes filled with tears,--tears of pride, of humiliation, ay,
and of an anger of which I had not thought her capable. She was indeed a
superb creature then, a personage I had not imagined. Gathering up her
gown, she passed Auguste and turned on him swiftly.

"If you were to bring that to him," she said, pointing to the bag in my
hand, "he would not so much as touch it. To-morrow I shall go to the
Ursulines, and I thank God I shall never see you again. I thank God I
shall no longer be your sister. Give Monsieur the bundle," she said to
the frightened Andre, who still stood by the hedge; "he may need food and
clothes for his journey."

She left us. We stood watching her until her gown had disappeared
amongst the foliage. Andre came forward and held out the bundle to
Auguste, who took it mechanically. Then Madame La Vicomtesse motioned to
Andre