e so far beneath you, one who is utterly unworthy that you
should bestow a single regret upon him."

"You are strangely humble to-night, Monsieur. It is unwonted in you, and
for once you wrong yourself. You have not said that I am forgiven."

"I have naught to forgive."

"Helas! you have--indeed you have!"

"Eh, bien!" quoth I, with a return of my old tone of banter, "I forgive
then."

Thereafter we travelled on in silence for some little while, my heart
full of joy at being so near to her, and the friendliness which she
evinced for me, and my mind casting o'er my joyous heart a cloud of some
indefinable evil presage.

"You are a brave man, M. de Luynes," she murmured presently, "and I have
been taught that brave men are ever honourable and true."

"Had they who taught you that known Gaston de Luynes, they would have
told you instead that it is possible for a vile man to have the one
redeeming virtue of courage, even as it is possible for a liar to have a
countenance that is sweet and innocent."

"There speaks that humble mood you are affecting, and which sits upon
you as my father's clothes might do. Nay, Monsieur, I shall believe in
my first teaching, and be deaf to yours."

Again there was a spell of silence. At last--"I have been thinking,
Monsieur," she said, "of that other occasion on which you rode with me.
I remember that you said you had killed a man, and when I asked you why,
you said that you had done it because he sought to kill you. Was that
the truth?"

"Assuredly, Mademoiselle. We fought a duel, and it is customary in a
duel for each to seek to kill the other."

"But why was this duel fought?" she cried, with some petulance.

"I fear me, Mademoiselle, that I may not answer you," I said, recalling
the exact motives, and thinking how futile appeared the quarrel which
Eugene de Canaples had sought with Andrea when viewed in the light of
what had since befallen.

"Was the quarrel of your seeking?"

"In a measure it was, Mademoiselle."

"In a measure!" she echoed. Then persisting, as women will--"Will you
not tell me what this measure was?"

"Tenez, Mademoiselle," I answered in despair; "I will tell you just
so much as I may. Your brother had occasion to be opposed to certain
projects that were being formed in Paris by persons high in power
around a beardless boy. Himself of too small importance to dare wage
war against those powerful ones who would have crushed him, your brother
sought to