ast corner of the
cathedral.'

'To-morrow evening?'

'Yes, when else?' the lad answered ungraciously. 'I said to-morrow
evening.'

I thought this strange. I could understand why Maignan should prefer to
keep his charge outside the walls until he heard from me, but not why
he should postpone a meeting so long. The message, too, seemed
unnecessarily meagre, and I began to think Simon was still withholding
something.

'Was that all?' I asked him.

'Yes, all,' he answered, 'except--'

'Except what?' I said sternly.

'Except that the woman showed me the gold token Mademoiselle de la
Vire used to carry,' he answered reluctantly, 'and said, if you wanted
further assurance that would satisfy you.'

'Did you see the coin?' I cried eagerly.

'To be sure,' he answered.

'Then, mon dieu!' I retorted, 'either you are deceiving me, or the woman
you saw deceived you. For mademoiselle has not got the token! I have it
here, in my possession! Now, do you still say you saw it, man?'

'I saw one like it,' he answered, trembling, his face damp. 'That I will
swear. And the woman told me what I have told you. And no more.'

'Then it is clear,' I answered, 'that mademoiselle has nothing to do
with this, and is doubtless many a league away. This is one of M. de
Bruhl's tricks. Fresnoy gave him the token he stole from me. And I
told him the story of the velvet knot myself. This is a trap; and had
I fallen into it, and gone to the Parvis to-morrow evening, I had never
kept another assignation, my lad.'

Simon looked thoughtful. Presently he said, with a crestfallen air, 'You
were to go alone. The woman said that.'

Though I knew well why he had suppressed this item, I forbore to blame
him. 'What was the woman like?' I said.

'She had very much of Franchette's figure,' he answered. He could not
go beyond that. Blinded by the idea that the woman was mademoiselle's
attendant, and no one else, he had taken little heed of her, and could
not even say for certain that she was not a man in woman's clothes.

I thought the matter over and discussed it with him; and was heartily
minded to punish M. de Bruhl, if I could discover a way of turning his
treacherous plot against himself. But the lack of any precise knowledge
of his plans prevented me stirring in the matter; the more as I felt no
certainty that I should be master of my actions when the time came.

Strange to say the discovery of this movement on the part of Bruhl, who
had se