ussac continued, "I could see that she
repeated a story she had been taught, that she was a paid
_gouvernante_. Yet, what to do? Already the troop was out of sight; I
might not linger. Had I been alone, it may be I would have snatched
the child from her, jumped on my horse, and carried it away as once
you carried it, guarded it as you--as _we_, monsieur--guarded it.
_Helas!_ that could not be. Therefore, on your behalf, I kissed the
little thing, and I emptied my poor purse into the woman's hand. 'Keep
it well,' I said, 'keep it well, and thereby you shall reap a reward
greater by far than any you now receive. I know--I know more than you
think.' Then the _bonne_ replied to me: 'So long as I am able it will
be guarded well. No danger threatens the child at present'--she said
'at present'--I am unhappy that I have to mention those words. But she
spoke them. I knew not what had happened then; I know now from your
letter. But, monsieur, what does it mean? De Roquemaure tried to slay
the child when you had her in your keeping. Now that he has her in his
own--for who can doubt it?--he treats her well. Monsieur, again I say,
what does it mean? And the 'at present'--what, too, does that mean?"

St. Georges was no more able to answer that silent question than the
far-distant writer of it. Instead, he repeated to himself again and
again, as he had often done, the same words, "What did it mean?" And
as a man stumbling in the dark, he could find no way that led him to
the light.

"How can I answer him?" he mused. "What answer find? The villain tried
to slay her, as Boussac says, when we were there to guard her; now
that he has her in his charge, now that his hate is doubled, must be
doubled and intensified by my determination to slay him, as I almost
succeeded in doing, he stays his hand. What does the mystery mean?"
And one answer alone presented itself to him. De Roquemaure might have
discovered that that which he once suspected to be the case was in
reality not so. He might have found that, in truth, he, St. Georges,
was _not_ the Duc de Vannes.

"Thus," he reflected, "he would hesitate to murder the harmless child.
His vengeance on me is glutted; he must have known, even so early as
Boussac's passage through Troyes, that I was as good as dead in that
vile galley; if he knew, too, that I am not really De Vannes's heir,
the child no longer stands in his light. And devil though he is, even
his tigerish nature may have halted a