lover's understanding, I saw also
that he liked to talk of her. His eyes, in the mirror, did not meet
mine, but were fixed, as on some distant and pleasing prospect, though
there was, as always, a slight disdain at his mouth. But the eyes
were clear, resolute, and strong, never wavering--and I never saw them
waver--yet in them something distant and inscrutable. It was a candid
eye, and he was candid in his evil; he made no pretense; and though the
means to his ends were wicked, they were never low. Presently, glancing
round the room, I saw an easel on which was a canvas. He caught my
glance.

"Silly work for a soldier and a gentleman," he said, "but silliness is
a great privilege. It needs as much skill to carry folly as to be an
ambassador. Now, you are often much too serious, Captain Moray."

At that he rose, and, after putting on his coat, came over to the
easel and threw up the cloth, exposing a portrait of Alixe! It had been
painted in by a few bold strokes, full of force and life, yet giving her
face more of that look which comes to women bitterly wise in the ways of
this world than I cared to see. The treatment was daring, and it cut me
like a knife that the whole painting had a red glow: the dress was red,
the light falling on the hair was red, the shine of the eyes was red
also. It was fascinating, but weird, and, to me, distressful. There
flashed through my mind the remembrance of Mathilde in her scarlet robe
as she stood on the Heights that momentous night of my arrest. I
looked at the picture in silence. He kept gazing at it with a curious,
half-quizzical smile, as if he were unconscious of my presence. At last
he said, with a slight knitting of his brows:

"It is strange--strange. I sketched that in two nights ago, by the light
of the fire, after I had come from the Chateau St. Louis--from memory,
as you see. It never struck me where the effect was taken from, that
singular glow over all the face and figure. But now I see it; it
returns: it is the impression of colour in the senses, left from the
night that lady-bug Mathilde flashed out on the Heights! A fine--a fine
effect! H'm! for another such one might give another such Mathilde!"

At that moment we were both startled by a sound behind us, and,
wheeling, we saw Voban, a mad look in his face, in the act of throwing
at Doltaire a short spear which he had caught up from a corner. The
spear flew from his hand even as Doltaire sprang aside, drawing his
s