dence that he would have
shrewd eyes, indeed, who could infer from my appearance that I was
other than the same masked gentleman who had that very day ridden into
Canaples at the head of a troop of his Eminence's guards.

I made my way swiftly back along the path that St. Auban and I had
together trodden but a little while ago, and past the chateau until I
came to the shrubbery where Michelot--faithful to the orders I had given
him--awaited my return. From his concealment he had seen me leave the
chateau with the Marquis, and as I suddenly loomed up before him now, he
took me for the man whose clothes I wore, and naturally enough assumed
that ill had befallen Gaston de Luynes. Of a certainty I had been
pistolled by him had I not spoken in time. I lingered but to give him
certain necessary orders; then, whilst he went off to join Abdon and see
to their fulfilment, I made my way stealthily, with eyes keeping watch
around me, across the terrace, and through the window into the room that
St. Auban had left to follow me to his death.

The tapers still burned, and in all respects the chamber was as it had
been; the back and breast pieces still lay upon the floor, and on the
table the littered documents. The door I ascertained had been locked on
the inside, a precaution which St. Auban had no doubt taken so that none
might spy upon the work that busied him.

I closed and made fast the window, then I bethought me that, being in
ignorance of the whereabouts of St. Auban's bed-chamber, I must perforce
spend the night as best I could within that very room.

And so I sat me down and pondered deeply o'er the work that was to come,
the part I was about to play, and the details of its playing. In this
manner did I while away perchance an hour; through the next one I must
have slept, for I awakened with a start to find three tapers spent and
the last one spluttering, and in the sky the streaks that heralded the
summer dawn.

Again I fell to thinking; again I slept, and woke again to find the
night gone and the sunlight on my face. Someone knocked at the door, and
that knocking vibrated through my brain and set me wide-awake, indeed.
It was as the signal to uplift the curtain and let my play-acting
commence.

Hastily I rose and shot a glance at the mirror to see that my wig hung
straight and that my mask was rightly adjusted. I started at my own
reflection, for methought that from the glass 't was St. Auban who
looked at me, as I