ot fight?' the lad retorted rebelliously. 'What then?'

It was so clear that our adversary gained an unfair advantage in this
way that I could not answer the question. I let it pass, therefore, and
merely repeating my former injunction, bade Simon think out another way.

He promised reluctantly to do so, and, after spending some moments in
thought, went out to learn whether the house was being watched.

When he returned, his countenance wore so new an expression that I saw
at once that something had happened. He did not meet my eye, however,
and did not explain, but made as if he would go out again, with
something of confusion in his manner. Before finally disappearing,
however, he seemed to change his mind once more; for, marching up to me
where I stood eyeing him with the utmost astonishment, he stopped before
me, and suddenly drawing out his hand, thrust something into mine.

'What is it, man?' I said mechanically.

'Look!' he answered rudely, breaking silence for the first time. 'You
should know. Why ask me? What have I to do with it?'

I looked then, and saw that he had given me a knot of velvet precisely
similar is shape, size, and material to that well-remembered one which
had aided me so opportunely in my search for mademoiselle. This differed
from that a little in colour, but in nothing else, the fashion of the
bow being the same, and one lappet hearing the initials 'C. d. l. V.,'
while the other had the words, 'A moi.' I gazed at it in wonder. 'But,
Simon,' I said, 'what does it mean? Where did you get it?'

'Where should I get it?' he answered jealously. Then, seeming to
recollect himself, he changed his tone. 'A woman gave it to me in the
street,' he said.

I asked him what woman.

'How should I know?' he answered, his eyes gleaming with anger. 'It was
a woman in a mask.'

'Was it Fanchette?' I said sternly.

'It might have been. I do not know,' he responded.

I concluded at first that mademoiselle and her escort had arrived in the
outskirts of the city, and that Maignan had justified his reputation
for discretion by sending in to learn from me whether the way was clear
before he entered. In this notion I was partly confirmed and partly
shaken by the accompanying message; which Simon, from whom every scrap
of information had to be dragged as blood from a stone, presently
delivered.

'You are to meet the sender half an hour after sunset to-morrow
evening,' he said, 'on the Parvis at the north-e