when his eyes
met mine that night.

He sprang up with an inarticulate cry that sank into something that I
can but liken to the rattle which issues from the throat of expiring
men. For a second he stood where he had risen, then terror loosened his
knees, and he sank back into his chair. His mouth fell open, and the
trembling lips were drawn down at the corners like those of a sobbing
child; his cheeks turned whiter than the lawn collar at his throat, and
his eyes, wide open in a horrid stare, were fixed on mine and, powerless
to avert them, he met my gaze--cold, stern, and implacable.

For a moment we remained thus, and I marvelled greatly to see a man
whose heart, if full of evil, I had yet deemed stout enough, stricken by
fear into so parlous and pitiful a condition.

Then I had the explanation of it as he lifted his right hand and made
the sign of the cross, first upon himself, then in the air, whilst his
lips moved, and I guessed that to himself he was muttering some prayer
of exorcising purport. There was the solution of the terror--sweat
that stood out in beads upon his brow--he had deemed me a spectre; the
spectre of a man he believed to have foully done to death on a spot
across the Loire visible from the window at my back.

At last he sufficiently mastered himself to break the awful silence.

"What do you want?" he whispered; then, his voice gaining power as he
used it--"Speak," he commanded. "Man or devil, speak!"

I laughed for answer, harshly, mockingly; for never had I known a
fiercer, crueller mood. At the sound of that laugh, satanical though may
have been its ring, he sprang up again, and unsheathing a dagger he took
a step towards me.

"We shall see of what you are made," he cried. "If you blast me in the
act, I'll strike you!"

I laughed again, and raising my arm I gave him the nozzle of a pistol to
contemplate.

"Stand where you are, St. Auban, or, by the God above us, I'll send your
ghost a-wandering," quoth I coolly.

My voice, which I take it had nothing ghostly in it, and still more
the levelled pistol, which of all implements is the most unghostly,
dispelled his dread. The colour crept slowly back to his cheeks, and his
mouth closed with a snap of determination.

"Is it, indeed, you, master meddler?" he said. "Peste! I thought you
dead these three months."

"And you are overcome with joy to find that you were in error, eh,
Marquis? We Luynes die hard."

"It seems so, indeed," he a