The gossips are liars. And----"

"Sir Henry himself is quite aware of that. I have already spoken quite
plainly and openly to him, and suggested my departure from Glencardine
on account of ill-natured remarks by her ladyship's enemies. But he
would not hear of my leaving, and pressed me to remain."

Krail looked at him in blank surprise. "Well," he said, "if you've been
bold enough to do this in face of the gossip, then you're a much
cleverer man than ever I took you to be."

For answer, Flockart took some letters from his breast-pocket, selected
one written in a foreign hand, and gave it to Krail to read. It was from
the hermit of Glencardine, written at his dictation by Monsieur Goslin,
and was couched in the warmest and most confidential terms.

"Look here, James," exclaimed the shabby man, handing back the letter,
"I'm going to be perfectly frank with you. Tell me if I speak the truth
or if I lie. It is neither affection nor friendship which links your
life with that woman's. Am I right?"

Flockart did not answer for some moments. His eyes were cast upon the
ground. "Yes, Krail," he admitted at last when the question had been put
to him a second time--"yes, Krail. You speak the truth. It is neither
affection nor friendship."

CHAPTER XXV

SHOWS GABRIELLE IN EXILE

Midway between historic Fotheringhay and ancient Apethorpe, the
ancestral seat of the Earls of Westmorland, lay the long, straggling,
and rather poverty-stricken village of Woodnewton. Like many other
Northamptonshire villages, it consisted of one long street of cottages,
many of them with dormer windows peeping from beneath the brown thatch,
the better houses of stone, with old mullioned windows, but all of them
more or less in stages of decay. With the depreciation in agriculture,
Woodnewton, once quite a prosperous little place, was now terribly
shabby and depressing.

As he entered the village, the first object that met the eye of the
stranger was a barn with the roof half fallen away, and next it a ruined
house with its moss-grown thatch full of holes. The paving was ill-kept,
and even the several inns bore an appearance of struggles with poverty.

Half-way up the long, straight, dispiriting street stood a cottage
larger and neater-looking than the rest. Its ugly exterior was
half-hidden by ivy, which had been cut away from the diamond-paned
windows; while, unlike its neighbours, its roof was tiled and its brown
door newly painted and