roaching it, he felt the roan stagger beneath him, halt in its
strides, then falter; and, shrewd horseman as he was, knew that it had
either cast a shoe, or had got a stone in one. And as he dismounted
close by the inn, though still some twoscore yards from the
mounting-block, he heard behind him the clatter of other hoofs coming
on, and the light laugh of a woman, also the deeper tones of a man.

"_Pasquedieu!_" he heard the latter say--and started both at the
exclamation and the voice--"you may laugh, _ma mie_, yet I tell you
'tis so. He will marry her, spend her money on other women as I spend
mine on you--_Morbleu!_ whom have we here?" and the man riding along
the road with his female companion pulled up his own horse, as the
woman did hers, on seeing another traveller dismounted by the side of,
and examining, his animal.

"Whom?" exclaimed that traveller, looking up--"whom? One perhaps whom
you know. One whose name is Georges St. Georges." Then, vaulting back
into his saddle--not meaning to be taken at a disadvantage--he bent
forward and looked into the newcomer's face. "Did you ever hear that
name before, monsieur?" he asked.

The face into which he gazed was that of a young, good-looking man,
close shaven and with gray eyes that looked at him, as he thought,
with terror. He was well dressed, too, in a riding costume of the
period, while the woman who sat her horse, peering at him out of the
eyelets of her mask, was also smartly arrayed in a female riding coat
of the day, her head covered with a hood.

"Answer, monsieur," said St. Georges.

"Never," the other replied. "How should I know the name of
every--person--I meet on the road?"

St. Georges bent forward over his saddle so that his own face was now
nearer by a foot to the man with the gray eyes; then he said:

"Monsieur de Roquemaure, you are a liar! And more, a thief, a
kidnapper; also, a would-be assassin. I know you and this, your
wanton, here. You have to answer to me to-night for all you have done
against me and mine in the past two weeks."

"_Mon Dieu_!" he heard the woman hiss beneath her mask. "Kill him,
Raoul, kill him! God! that you should let him live and utter such
things!" And as she so hissed she leaned down and struck at his face
with her riding whip.

"Hound!" she exclaimed, "you apply that word to me? To me?"

"The woman speaks well," St. Georges said, warding off the blow with
his arm while his eye rested on her for a moment; "it