sing eagerly,
with tears in his eyes, he exclaimed, 'Embrace me, my dear, dear son!
The thing is done! Oh! what peace, what joy!'

The instinct of recoil came stronger now. He stepped back with folded
arms, saying again, 'God help me! God forbid that I should be a
traitor!'

'My son, hear me; these are but easily removed points of honour,' began
the Chevalier; but at that moment Philip suddenly started from, or in
his slumber, leapt on his feet, and called out, 'Avaunt, Satan!' then
opened his eyes, and looked, as if barely recalling where he was.

'Philip!' exclaimed Berenger, 'did you hear?'

'I--I don't know,' he said, half-bewildered. 'Was I dreaming that the
fiend was parleying with us in the voice of M. le Chevalier there to
sell our souls for one hour of home?'

He spoke English, but Berenger replied in French.

'You were not wrong, Philip. Sir, he dreamt that the devil was
tempting me in your voice while you were promising me his liberty on my
fulfilling your first condition.'

'What?' said Philip, now fully awake, and gathering the state of things,
as he remembered the words that had doubtless been the cause of his
dream. 'And if you did, Berenger, I give you warning they should never
see me at home. What! could I show my face there with such tidings? No!
I should go straight to La Noue, or to the Low Countries, and kill every
Papist I could for having debauched you!'

'Hush! hush! Philip,' said Berenger; 'I could not break my faith to
Heaven or my wife even for your sake, and my cousin sees how little
beholden you would be to me for so doing. With your leave, Monsieur, we
will retire.'

The Chevalier detained Berenger for a moment to whisper, 'What I see
is so noble a heart that I know you cannot sacrifice him to your
punctilio.'

Philip was so angry with Berenger, so excited, and so determined to show
that nothing ailed him, that for a short time he was roused, and seemed
to be recovering; but in a few days he flagged again, only, if possible
with more gruffness, moodiness, and pertinacity in not allowing that
anything was amiss. It was the bitterest drop of all in Berenger's cup,
when in the end of January he looked back at what Philip had been only
a month before, and saw how he had wasted away and lost strength; the
impulse rather to ruin himself that destroy his brother came with such
force that he could scarcely escape it by his ever-recurring cry
for help to withstand it. And then Diane, in