"Why," I
muttered, "why did she do it?"

"She had failed you know to get her sister back to Pavannes' house,
where she would have fallen an easy victim. Bezers, who knew Madame
d'O, prevented that. Then that fiend slipped back with her knife;
thinking that in the common butchery the crime would be overlooked, and
never investigated, and that Mirepoix would be silent!"

I said nothing. I was stunned. Yet I believed the story. When I went
over the facts in my mind I found that a dozen things, overlooked at
the time and almost forgotten in the hurry of events, sprang up to
confirm it. M. de Pavannes'--the other M. de Pavannes'--suspicions had
been well founded. Worse than Bezers was she? Ay! worse a hundred
times. As much worse as treachery ever is than violence; as the
pitiless fraud of the serpent is baser than the rage of the wolf.

"I thought," Croisette added softly, not looking at me, "when I
discovered that you had gone off with her, that I should never see you
again, Anne. I gave you up for lost. The happiest moment of my life I
think was when I saw you come back."

"Croisette," I whispered piteously, my cheeks burning, "let us never
speak of her again."

And we never did--for years. But how strange is life. She and the
wicked man with whom her fate seemed bound up had just crossed our
lives when their own were at the darkest. They clashed with us, and,
strangers and boys as we were, we ruined them. I have often asked
myself what would have happened to me had I met her at some earlier and
less stormy period--in the brilliance of her beauty. And I find but
one answer. I should bitterly have rued the day. Providence was good
to me. Such men and such women, we may believe have ceased to exist
now. They flourished in those miserable days of war and divisions, and
passed away with them like the foul night-birds of the battle-field.

To return to our journey. In the morning sunshine one could not but be
cheerful, and think good things possible. The worst trial I had came
with each sunset. For then--we generally rode late into the
evening--Louis sought my side to talk to me of his sweetheart. And how
he would talk of her! How many thousand messages he gave me for her!
How often he recalled old days among the hills, with each laugh and
jest and incident, when we five had been as children! Until I would
wonder passionately, the tears running down my face in the darkness,
how he could--how