.

"Let me reflect," he had pondered to himself, as day by day he drew
nearer to the capital, "let me try to think it all out, see it
clearly. God give me power to do so!"

Then he had endeavoured, by going over his life from the commencement,
to reduce matters to something short of chaos.

"That I am De Vannes's son--his heir--must be!" he thought; "it gives
the cause, the reason for what follows. This is clear. Also the attack
on me, the stealing of Dorine, proceeds from a like cause. And if all
that was the duke's--his title, his wealth--is mine, and, after me,
hers, in whose light can we stand, against whose interest thrust, but
De Roquemaure's? All this is as clear as day; it is here the mystery
begins. For, first, how does he know this? Next--which is more
strange--how know that on a certain night I should be on the road
between two such remote places as Pontarlier and Paris? How know, too,
that I have my child with me, as he must have known, since he
mentioned it to the myrmidons he enlisted at Recey? If I could
discover this--should ever discover it, a light might break in upon
what followed--more mysterious still."

When he had turned this over and over again in his thoughts as mile by
mile and league by league he drew nearer the end of his journey, he
endeavoured to arrange and piece together the further, the newer, and
fresher mystery of all that had happened since the night he rested
under the roof of the De Roquemaures' house. And here his perplexity
was even greater than before.

"He acts alone," he reflected; "at least without assistance from his
kinswomen--his stepmother and half-sister. For if such is not the
case, then viler wretches than they never bore the shape of womanhood.
The excitement of the marquise, the noble sympathy of that girl
expressed in every glance of those pure eyes, were not, could not have
been assumed--false! If so, perish all my belief in woman's truth and
honour! Yet from that very manoir over which she, his mother, rules
more than he, for the present at least, came forth two--one a man in
his garb, the dress of his house--the other a woman. For her, though,
it is not so difficult of explanation! The murdered peasant's wife
spoke of him as having female instruments at his beck and call, and
although her companion wore his livery she might be any creature in
the city over whom he possessed influence."

And now, as he reflected, he knew that he had come to the most
difficu