st day
we four rode together, unmolested, so long as we kept near the centre
of the straggling cavalcade. The Vidame always rode alone, and in
front, brooding with bent head and sombre face over his revenge, as I
supposed. He would ride in this fashion, speaking to no one and giving
no orders, for a day together. At times I came near to pitying him.
He had loved Kit in his masterful way, the way of one not wont to be
thwarted, and he had lost her--lost her, whatever might happen. He
would get nothing after all by his revenge. Nothing but ashes in the
mouth. And so I saw in softer moments something inexpressibly
melancholy in that solitary giant-figure pacing always alone.

He seldom spoke to us. More rarely to Louis. When he did, the
harshness of his voice and his cruel eyes betrayed the gloomy hatred in
which he held him. At meals he ate at one end of the table: we four
at the other, as three of us had done on that first evening in Paris.
And sometimes the covert looks, the grim sneer he shot at his
rival--his prisoner--made me shiver even in the sunshine. Sometimes,
on the other hand, when I took him unawares, I found an expression on
his face I could not read.

I told Croisette, but warily, my suspicions of his purpose. He heard
me, less astounded to all appearance than I had expected. Presently I
learned the reason. He had his own view. "Do you not think it
possible, Anne?" he suggested timidly--we were of course alone at the
time--"that he thinks to make Louis resign Mademoiselle?"

"Resign her!" I exclaimed obtusely. "How?"

"By giving him a choice--you understand?"

I did understand I saw it in a moment. I had been dull not to see it
before. Bezers might put it in this way: let M. de Pavannes resign
his mistress and live, or die and lose her.

"I see," I answered. "But Louis would not give her up. Not to him!"

"He would lose her either way," Croisette answered in a low tone. "That
is not however the worst of it. Louis is in his power. Suppose he
thinks to make Kit the arbiter, Anne, and puts Louis up to ransom,
setting Kit for the price? And gives her the option of accepting
himself, and saving Louis' life; or refusing, and leaving Louis to die?"

"St. Croix!" I exclaimed fiercely. "He would not be so base!" And yet
was not even this better than the blind vengeance I had myself
attributed to him?

"Perhaps not," Croisette answered, while he gazed onwards through the
twilight.