rault
and deliver him my note of hand for my Picardy possessions, the bulk--by
far the greater bulk--of all my fortune. My second step was to repair to
you at the Hotel de l'Epee.

"At last I could approach you with clean hands; I could confess what
I had done; and since it seemed to me that I had made the utmost
atonement, I was confident of success. Alas! I came too late. In the
porch of the auberge I met you as you came forth. From my talkative
intendant you had learnt already the story of that bargain into which
Bardelys had entered. You had learnt who I was, and you thought that you
had learnt why I wooed you. Accordingly you could but despise me."

She had sunk into a chair. Her hands were folded in a listless manner in
her lap, and her eyes were lowered, her cheeks pale. But the swift heave
of her bosom told me that my words were not without effect. "Do you know
nothing of the bargain that I made with Chatellerault?" she asked in a
voice that held, I thought, some trace of misery.

"Chatellerault was a cheat!" I cried. "No man of honour in France would
have accounted himself under obligation to pay that wager. I paid it,
not because I thought the payment due, but that by its payment I might
offer you a culminating proof of my sincerity."

"Be that as it may," said she, "I passed him my word to--to marry him,
if he set you at liberty."

"The promise does not hold, for when you made it I was at liberty
already. Besides, Chatellerault is dead by now--or very near it."

"Dead?" she echoed, looking up.

"Yes, dead. We fought--" The ghost of a smile, of sudden, of scornful
understanding, passed like a ray of light across her face. "Pardieu!" I
cried, "you do me a wrong there. It was not by my hands that he fell. It
was not by me that the duel was instigated."

And with that I gave her the whole details of the affair, including the
information that Chatellerault had been no party to my release, and that
for his attempted judicial murder of me the King would have dealt
very hardly with him had he not saved the King the trouble by throwing
himself upon his sword:

There was a silence when I had done. Roxalanne sat on, and seemed to
ponder. To let all that I had said sink in and advocate my cause, as
to me was very clear it must, I turned aside and moved to one of the
windows.

"Why did you not tell me before?" she asked suddenly. "Why--oh, why--did
you not confess to me the whole infamous affair as soon as you