"Monsieur de Saint-Eustache," said I, "you have so dishonoured this blade that I do not think you would care to wear it again." Saying which, I snapped it across my knee, and flung it far out into the river, for all that the hilt was a costly one, richly wrought in bronze and gold.

He raised his livid countenance, and his eyes blazed impotent fury.

"Par la mort Dieu!" he cried hoarsely, "you shall give me satisfaction for this!"

"If you account yourself still unsatisfied, I am at your service when you will," said I courteously.

Then, before more could be said, I saw Monsieur de Lavedan and the Vicomtesse approaching hurriedly across the parterre. The Vicomte's brow was black with what might have appeared anger, but which I rightly construed into apprehension.

"What has taken place? What have you done?" he asked of me.

"He has brutally assaulted the Chevalier," cried Madame shrilly, her eyes malevolently set upon me. "He is only a child, this poor Saint-Eustache," she reproached me. "I saw it all from my window, Monsieur de Lesperon. It was brutal; it was cowardly. So to beat a boy! Shame! If you had a quarrel with him, are there not prescribed methods for their adjustment between gentlemen? Pardieu, could you not have given him proper satisfaction?"

"If madame will give herself the trouble of attentively examining this poor Saint-Eustache," said I, with a sarcasm which her virulence prompted, "you will agree, I think, that I have given him very proper and very thorough satisfaction. I would have met him sword in hand, but the Chevalier has the fault of the very young—he is precipitate; he was in too great a haste, and he could not wait until I got a sword. So I was forced to do what I could with a cane."

"But you provoked him," she flashed back.

"Whoever told you so has misinformed you, madame. On the contrary, he provoked me. He gave me the lie. I struck him—could I do less?—and he drew. I defended myself, and I supplemented my defence by a caning, so that this poor Saint-Eustache might realize the unworthiness of what he had done. That is all, madame."

But she was not so easily to be appeased, not even when Mademoiselle and the Vicomte joined their voices to mine in extenuation of my conduct. It was like Lavedan. For all that he was full of dread of the result and of the vengeance Saint-Eustache might wreak—boy though he was—he expressed himself freely touching the Chevalier's behaviour and the fittingness of the punishment that had overtaken him.

The Vicomtesse stood in small awe of her husband, but his judgment upon a point of honour was a matter that she would not dare contest. She was ministering to the still prostrate Chevalier who, I think, remained prostrate now that he might continue to make appeal to her sympathy—when suddenly she cut in upon Roxalanne's defence of me.

"Where have you been?" she demanded suddenly.

"When, my mother?"

"This afternoon," answered the Vicomtesse impatiently. "The Chevalier was waiting two hours for you."

Roxalanne coloured to the roots of her hair. The Vicomte frowned.

"Waiting for me, my mother? But why for me?"

"Answer my question—where have you been?"

"I was with Monsieur de Lesperon," she answered simply.

"Alone?" the Vicomtesse almost shrieked.

"But yes." The poor child's tones were laden with wonder at this catechism.

"God's death!" she snapped. "It seems that my daughter is no better than—"

Heaven knows what may have been coming, for she had the most virulent, scandalous tongue that I have ever known in a woman's head—which is much for one who has lived at Court to say. But the Vicomte, sharing my fears, perhaps, and wishing to spare the child's ears, interposed quickly "Come, madame, what airs are these? What sudden assumption of graces that we do not affect? We are not in Paris. This is not the Luxembourg. En province comme en province, and here we are simple folk—"

"Simple folk?" she interrupted, gasping. "By God, am I married to a ploughman? Am I Vicomtesse of Lavedan, or the wife of a boor of the countryside? And is the honour of your daughter a matter—"

"The honour of my daughter is not in question, madame," he interrupted in his turn, and with a sudden sternness that spent the fire of her indignation as a spark that is trampled underfoot. Then, in a calm, level voice: "Ah, here are the servants," said he.

"Permit them, madame, to take charge of Monsieur de Saint-Eustache. Anatole, you had better order the carriage for Monsieur le Chevalier. I do not think that he will be able to ride home."

Anatole peered at the pale young gentleman on the ground, then he turned his little wizened face upon me, and grinned in a singularly solemn fashion. Monsieur de Saint-Eustache was little loved, it seemed.

Leaning heavily upon the arm of one of the lacqueys, the Chevalier moved painfully towards the courtyard, where the carriage was being prepared for him. At the last moment he turned and beckoned the Vicomte to his side.

"As God lives, Monsieur de Lavedan," he swore, breathing heavily in the fury that beset him, "you shall bitterly regret having taken sides to-day with that Gascon bully. Remember me, both of you, when you are journeying to Toulouse."

The Vicomte stood beside him, impassive and unmoved by that grim threat, for all that to him it must have sounded like a death-sentence.

"Adieu, monsieur—a speedy recovery," was all he answered.

But I stepped up to them. "Do you not think, Vicomte, that it were better to detain him?" I asked.

"Pshaw!" he ejaculated. "Let him go."

The Chevalier's eyes met mine in a look of terror. Perhaps already that young man repented him of his menace, and he realized the folly of threatening one in whose power he still chanced to be.

"Bethink you, monsieur," I cried. "Yours is a noble and useful life. Mine is not without value, either. Shall we suffer these lives—aye, and the happiness of your wife and daughter—to be destroyed by this vermin?"

"Let him go, monsieur; let him go. I am not afraid."

I bowed and stepped back, motioning to the lacquey to take the fellow away, much as I should have motioned him to remove some uncleanness from before me.

The Vicomtesse withdrew in high dudgeon to her chamber, and I did not see her again that evening. Mademoiselle I saw once, for a moment, and she employed that moment to question me touching the origin of my quarrel with Saint-Eustache.

"Did he really lie, Monsieur de Lesperon?" she asked.

"Upon my honour, mademoiselle," I answered solemnly, "I have plighted my troth to no living woman." Then my chin sank to my breast as I bethought me of how tomorrow she must opine me the vilest liar living—for I was resolved to be gone before Marsac arrived—since the real Lesperon I did not doubt was, indeed, betrothed to Mademoiselle de Marsac.

"I shall leave Lavedan betimes to-morrow, mademoiselle," I pursued presently. "What has happened to-day makes my departure all the more urgent. Delay may have its dangers. You will hear strange things of me, as already I have warned you. But be merciful. Much will be true, much false; yet the truth itself is very vile, and—" I stopped short, in despair of explaining or even tempering what had to come. I shrugged my shoulders in my abandonment of hope, and I turned towards the window. She crossed the room and came to stand beside me.

"Will you not tell me? Have you no faith in me? Ah, Monsieur de Lesperon—"

"'Sh! child, I cannot. It is too late to tell you now."

"Oh, not too late! From what you say they will tell me, I should think, perhaps, worse of you than you deserve. What is this thing you hide? What is this mystery? Tell me, monsieur. Tell me."

Did ever woman more plainly tell a man she loved him, and that loving him she would find all excuses for him? Was ever woman in better case to hear a confession from the man that loved her, and of whose love she was assured by every instinct that her sex possesses in such matters? Those two questions leapt into my mind, and in resolving them I all but determined to speak even now in the eleventh hour.

And then—I know not how—a fresh barrier seemed to arise. It was not merely a matter of telling her of the wager I was embarked upon; not merely a matter of telling her of the duplicity that I had practised, of the impostures by which I had gained admittance to her father's confidence and trust; not merely a matter of confessing that I was not Lesperon. There would still be the necessity of saying who I was. Even if she forgave all else, could she forgive me for being Bardelys the notorious Bardelys, the libertine, the rake, some of whose exploits she had heard of from her mother, painted a hundred times blacker than they really were? Might she not shrink from me when I told her I was that man? In her pure innocence she deemed, no doubt, that the life of every man who accounted himself a gentleman was moderately clean. She would not see in me—as did her mother—no more than a type of the best class in France, and having no more than the vices of my order. As a monster of profligacy might she behold me, and that—ah, Dieu!—I could not endure that she should do whilst I was by.

It may be—indeed, now, as I look back, I know that I exaggerated my case. I imagined she would see it as I saw it then. For would you credit it? With this great love that was now come to me, it seemed the ideals of my boyhood were returned, and I abhorred the man that I had been. The life I had led now filled me with disgust and loathing; the notions I had formed seemed to me now all vicious and distorted, my cynicism shallow and unjust.