ng Lesperon, and of how I had gone off alone, and evidently assumed
the name and role of that proscribed rebel, and thus conducted my
wooing under sympathy inspiring circumstances at Lavedan. Then came, he
announced, the very cream of the jest, when I was arrested as Lesperon
and brought to Toulouse and to trial in Lesperon's stead; he told them
how I had been sentenced to death in the other man's place, and he
assured them that I would certainly have been beheaded upon the morrow
but that news had been borne to him--Rodenard--of my plight, and he was
come to deliver me.

My first impulse upon hearing him tell of the wager had been to stride
into the room and silence him by my coming. That I did not obey that
impulse was something that presently I was very bitterly to regret. How
it came that I did not I scarcely know. I was tempted, perhaps, to see
how far this henchman whom for years I had trusted was unworthy of
that trust. And so, there in the porch, I stayed until he had ended by
telling the company that he was on his way to inform the King--who by
great good chance was that day arrived in Toulouse--of the mistake that
had been made, and thus obtain my immediate enlargement and earn my
undying gratitude.

Again I was on the point of entering to administer a very stern reproof
to that talkative rogue, when of a sudden there was a commotion within.
I caught a scraping of chairs, a dropping of voices, and then suddenly I
found myself confronted by Roxalanne de Lavedan herself, issuing with a
page and a woman in attendance.

For just a second her eyes rested on me, and the light coming through
the doorway at her back boldly revealed my countenance. And a very
startled countenance it must have been, for in that fraction of time I
knew that she had heard all that Rodenard had been relating. Under
that instant's glance of her eyes I felt myself turn pale; a shiver
ran through me, and the sweat started cold upon my brow. Then her gaze
passed from me, and looked beyond into the street, as though she had not
known me; whether in her turn she paled or reddened I cannot say,
for the light was too uncertain. Next followed what seemed to me an
interminable pause, although, indeed, it can have been no more than a
matter of seconds--aye, and of but few. Then, her gown drawn well aside,
she passed me in that same irrecognizing way, whilst I, abashed, shrank
back into the shadows of the porch, burning with shame and rage and
humi