piece of purely sentimental
quixotry. The quittances which the Mayor of Meudon had exacted from him
before he would issue the necessary safe-conducts placed the whole of
his future, perhaps his very life, in jeopardy. And he had consented to
do this not for the sake of a reality, but out of regard for an idea--he
who all his life had avoided the false lure of worthless and hollow
sentimentality.

Thus thought Andre-Louis as he considered her now so searchingly,
finding it, naturally enough, a matter of extraordinary interest to
look consciously upon his mother for the first time at the age of
eight-and-twenty.

From her he looked at last at Jacques, who remained at attention,
waiting by the open door.

"Could we be alone, madame?" he asked her.

She waved the footman away, and the door closed. In agitated silence,
unquestioning, she waited for him to account for his presence there at
so extraordinary a time.

"Rougane could not return," he informed her shortly. "At M. de
Kercadiou's request, I come instead."

"You! You are sent to rescue us!" The note of amazement in her voice was
stronger than that of her relief.

"That, and to make your acquaintance, madame."

"To make my acquaintance? But what do you mean, Andre-Louis?"

"This letter from M. de Kercadiou will tell you." Intrigued by his odd
words and odder manner, she took the folded sheet. She broke the seal
with shaking hands, and with shaking hands approached the written page
to the light. Her eyes grew troubled as she read; the shaking of her
hands increased, and midway through that reading a moan escaped her.
One glance that was almost terror she darted at the slim, straight man
standing so incredibly impassive upon the edge of the light, and
then she endeavoured to read on. But the crabbed characters of M. de
Kercadiou swam distortedly under her eyes. She could not read. Besides,
what could it matter what else he said. She had read enough. The sheet
fluttered from her hands to the table, and out of a face that was like a
face of wax, she looked now with a wistfulness, a sadness indescribable,
at Andre-Louis.

"And so you know, my child?" Her voice was stifled to a whisper.

"I know, madame my mother."

The grimness, the subtle blend of merciless derision and reproach in
which it was uttered completely escaped her. She cried out at the new
name. For her in that moment time and the world stood still. Her peril
there in Paris as the wife of an int