as his face, still
turned to me, seemed instinct to my eyes with triumphant malice. As I
moved towards him, however, with a fierce exclamation on my lips, he
suddenly dropped his eyes and knelt. Immediately M. Francois cried
'Hush!' and the men turned to me with scandalised faces. I fell back.
Yet even then, whispering on his knees by the dying man, the knave was
thinking, I felt sure, of me, glorying at once in his immunity and the
power it gave him to tantalise me without fear.

I determined, whatever the result, to intercept him when all was over;
and on the man dying a few minutes later, I walked resolutely to the
open side of the shed, thinking it likely he might try to slip away as
mysteriously as he had come. He stood a moment speaking to M. Francois,
however, and then, accompanied by him, advanced boldly to meet me, a
lean smile on his face.

'Father Antoine,' M. d'Agen said politely,' tells me that he knows
you, M. de Marsac, and desires to speak to you, MAL-A-PROPOS as is the
occasion.'

'And I to him,' I answered, trembling with rage, and only restraining
by an effort the impulse which would have had me dash my hand in the
priest's pale, smirking face. 'I have waited long for this moment,' I
continued, eyeing him steadily, as M. Francois withdrew out of hearing,
'and had you tried to avoid me, I would have dragged you back, though
all your tribe were here to protect you.'

His presence so maddened me that I scarcely knew what I said. I felt my
breath come quickly, I felt the blood surge to my head, and it was
with difficulty I restrained myself when he answered with well-affected
sanctity, 'Like mother, like son, I fear, sir. Huguenots both.'

I choked with rage. What!' I said, 'you dare to threaten me as you
threatened my mother? Fool! know that only to-day for the purpose of
discovering and punishing you I took the rooms in which my mother died.'

'I know it,' he answered quietly. And then in a second, as by magic, he
altered his demeanour completely, raising his head and looking me in the
face. 'That, and so much besides, I know,' he continued, giving me, to
my astonishment, frown for frown, 'that if you will listen to me for a
moment, M. de Marsac, and listen quietly, I will convince you that the
folly is not on my side.'

Amazed at his new manner, in which there was none of the madness that
had marked him at our first meeting, but a strange air of authority,
unlike anything I had associated with