'He may take you at your word,' said Domenico, with cryptic humour, in an attempt to steady these emotions.

Marc-Antoine stood forward. 'Lord Count, this is less of a deliverance than an escape.' He raised his hand to stay an interruption. 'Have no fear. It is not an escape for which Venice will be held responsible. It is covered by an order from the French Legation, bearing the signature of the chargè d'affaires. I wrung it from him in my superior capacity as the plenipotentiary Lebel.' Then he smiled a little. 'At this time yesterday I was persuaded that I had played the part of Lebel in vain for a whole year. Now I discover a sufficient reason for it.' Then he resumed his earlier tone. 'Because an accident may at any moment discover the deception, Domenico must lose no time. The gondola that brought us from Murano will take him on to San Giorgio in Alga and the Admiral, so that he may be conveyed to Trieste and thence journey to Vienna, to lie there until all is safe again.'

Joy in his preservation outweighed the pain this severance must otherwise have caused. There was instant agreement and instant bustle of preparation. It was Isotta who undertook to supervise the packing of his necessaries. She departed on that errand almost in relief to escape from the presence of Marc-Antoine, a presence which today should have been to her as the opening wide of the gates of happiness and fulfilment.

When at the end of a half-hour she came back to inform them that all was ready and that Domenico's packages were being loaded in the gondola, the lackey who held the door for her followed her into the room to announce at the same time that Madame la Vicomtesse de Saulx was below asking to see Messer Melville immediately. The servant took it upon himself to add that the lady seemed deeply agitated.

The announcement made a curious hush in that room, a hush which had no mystery for Marc-Antoine. He was less concerned to speculate why the lady should seek him here than to be thankful for her presence.

He begged leave to have her introduced, and in a complete and rather constrained silence they awaited her coming.

She entered breathlessly. She checked a moment within the threshold, her anxious eyes questing this way and that until they rested on Marc-Antoine. Then, with a little gasp, she gathered up her flowered panniers, and fluttered across to him.

'Marc! Oh, God be thanked!' She caught him by the arms in her excitement, disregarding utterly the other tenants of the room. 'My dear, I have done a dreadful, dreadful thing. It was an accident. A miserable accident. You'll never suppose that I would consciously have betrayed you, whatever I had discovered. You know that I am incapable of that. I did not know that you were impersonating Camille Lebel. How could I? And I told Villetard . . . No, I didn't tell him. It came out by accident. I was unaware of what I was really telling him. I have let him know that you are not Lebel.' Thus, breathlessly, confusedly, in her anxiety to announce and to explain, she got it out.

Marc-Antoine caught her wrist. He spoke sharply in his alarm.

'What exactly have you told him?'

She explained it all: the document she had seen, and the manner in which the truth had been surprised from her. To Marc-Antoine it was instantly clear. To the others it was but a deeper mystification. Then came her more definite warning, the announcement of Villetard's avowed intentions.

'You must go, Marc. I don't know how. But go. Don't waste a moment.'

He had recovered and now preserved his momentarily shaken calm. 'We have a little time. Villetard must first procure an order from the Doge; then find men to execute it; and finally these must discover me. I told him that I was to be found at the Inn of the Swords. So that is where they will first seek me; and this must create delays. Without wasting time, then, we need not be precipitate. Your warning, madame, is a very noble amend for an error you could not avoid.'

'As to that, I only pay a debt. I perceive now that I owe you for having spared me.'

She would have said much more had she obeyed her impulses. She would have put into words some of the tenderness that was in her eyes as they now regarded him. But the presence of those others, of whom she seemed at length to become aware, imposed restraint. He had not attempted to present her to them. Now that she became conscious of their presence, she perceived the omission and begged him to correct it.

'Ah, yes.' There was an oddness in his manner. He looked at Count Pizzamano and the others, particularly at Isotta, who shared the general sense of mystery. 'Your pardon,' he begged of them, and then to the Vicomtesse: 'By what name shall I present you to these good friends of mine?'

'By what name?' She was bewildered.

He smiled. 'Just as you know that I am not Lebel, so I also know that you are not the Vicomtesse de Saulx.'

There was a little cry from Isotta. Convulsively she gripped the arm of her brother, who knew so well what was passing in her mind.

The Vicomtesse recoiled a pace, amazement and fear in her delicate countenance. Instinctively at once she became the secret agent, on her guard. Instinctively she gathered up her weapons. Her manner changed. The fond, natural child vanished, giving place to the sophisticated woman of the world. Her eyes narrowed.

'And how long may you have been of that opinion?' she asked him.

'Of that conviction from the moment that I met you. Indeed, from the moment that I heard you named.'

The hard, unfaltering stare of those narrowed eyes was evidence of her self-control, as was the hard laugh that seemed to brand his words an impertinence. There was not a quaver in her faintly scornful voice.

'I scarcely know how to set about dispelling so extravagant a delusion. I can only assert that I am certainly the widow of the Vicomte de Saulx.'

'The widow?' interjected Count Pizzamano.

The interjection did not draw her glance. She kept her eyes on Marc-Antoine whilst answering: 'He was guillotined at Tours in ninety-three.'

Gently smiling, Marc-Antoine shook his head. 'I have the best of reasons for knowing that that is not the case, although your friend Lebel believed it.'

Her fear deepened under his odd gaze, half-humorous, half-sad. But resolutely she stood her ground. She tossed her head a little. 'Even if it were true that the Vicomte de Saulx was not guillotined, would that prove that he is not my husband?'

'Oh, no, madame.' He came forward. He took her hand, which in spite of her angry fear she relinquished to him, for there was something compellingly gentle in his manner and pitiful in his eyes, as if to express regret and ask forgiveness for what he did. 'What proves it is that if he had married anyone half so charming, it is impossible that he could have forgotten it. And I can positively assure you that he has no recollection of the marriage. Can it be that, like you, he suffers from a bad memory? For you appear completely to have forgotten what he looks like.'

She drew her hand out of his clasp. Her lip trembled. His words, without meaning to her, gave her the sense of being in a trap. She was bewildered. She looked round and met a curious smile from each of her three observers. The only one who did not smile, whose glance reflected something of the gentle wistfulness in Marc-Antoine's, was Isotta: an Isotta who in these last moments had lost her listlessness, whose eyes, that lately had been so dull, were shining now as with an inner light.

Then the poor, dazed Vicomtesse found that Marc-Antoine had recaptured her hand. Very straight, his chin high, he seemed suddenly to have become protective. So much was she conscious of this that her impulse was to bury her face upon his breast and in the shelter of it yield to the weakness of a woman who is lonely and frightened.

He spoke to the others, quietly firm. 'She shall not be further harassed, further humiliated. It is a poor return for what I owe her.'

The Count and Domenico both bowed as if in understanding and acknowledgment.

'Come, madame. Let me reconduct you.'

Still bewildered, faltering a little in her step, she obeyed the suasion of his hand. Glad to obey it; glad to escape, although she did not know from what. All that she gathered was that sense of his protection, and in that she readily went out with him and down the stairs.

In the vestibule he addressed the liveried porter.

'The gondola of Madame the Vicomtesse de Saulx.'

She looked up at him appealingly as she stood waiting at his side.

'Marc, what is it? You know that I do not understand.'

'Understand this, that in me you have a friend who will always treasure the memory of the debt in which today you have placed him. We part here, Anne, and we may never meet again. But if ever I can serve you, send me word to Avonford in Wiltshire. I will write it for you.'

He stepped into the porter's lodge, and on a sheet of paper supplied by the under-porter, he wrote rapidly in pencil. He handed her the sheet. At the sight of what he had written her face turned bloodless. She looked up at him with an expression that was akin to terror.

'This is impossible. You are mocking me. Why?'

'To what end should I mock you? That is less impossible than it may seem when you consider how Fate links us through Lebel. Oh, yes, I am Marc-Antoine de Saulx, my dear. I was not guillotined, and I never married. Now you understand.'

'And in all these months . . .'

'It has been my privilege to observe my widow. A unique experience. Come, child, your gondola waits.' He led her out to the marble steps. 'Let us at least part friends, my vicomtesse.' He bowed and kissed her hand, then steadied her as she stepped down into the boat.