man's
supersensitive consciousness: "That of branding you, Marguerite's
brother, as a liar and a cheat?"

"Blakeney!" retorted the other, as with flaming cheeks and wrathful eyes
he took a menacing step toward his friend; "had any man but you dared to
speak such words to me--"

"I pray to God, Armand, that no man but I has the right to speak them."

"You have no right."

"Every right, my friend. Do I not hold your oath?... Are you not
prepared to break it?"

"I'll not break my oath to you. I'll serve and help you in every way
you can command... my life I'll give to the cause... give me the most
dangerous--the most difficult task to perform.... I'll do it--I'll do it
gladly."

"I have given you an over-difficult and dangerous task."

"Bah! To leave Paris in order to engage horses, while you and the others
do all the work. That is neither difficult nor dangerous."

"It will be difficult for you, Armand, because your head Is not
sufficiently cool to foresee serious eventualities and to prepare
against them. It is dangerous, because you are a man in love, and a man
in love is apt to run his head--and that of his friends--blindly into a
noose."

"Who told you that I was in love?"

"You yourself, my good fellow. Had you not told me so at the outset,"
he continued, still speaking very quietly and deliberately and never
raising his voice, "I would even now be standing over you, dog-whip in
hand, to thrash you as a defaulting coward and a perjurer .... Bah!"
he added with a return to his habitual bonhomie, "I would no doubt even
have lost my temper with you. Which would have been purposeless and
excessively bad form. Eh?"

A violent retort had sprung to Armand's lips. But fortunately at that
very moment his eyes, glowing with anger, caught those of Blakeney fixed
with lazy good-nature upon his. Something of that irresistible dignity
which pervaded the whole personality of the man checked Armand's
hotheaded words on his lips.

"I cannot leave Paris to-morrow," he reiterated more calmly.

"Because you have arranged to see her again?"

"Because she saved my life to-day, and is herself in danger."

"She is in no danger," said Blakeney simply, "since she saved the life
of my friend."

"Percy!"

The cry was wrung from Armand St. Just's very soul. Despite the tumult
of passion which was raging in his heart, he was conscious again of the
magnetic power which bound so many to this man's service. The words he
had