e
to me as to win her from her own unreasonableness. In the days to come
she should thank me for my harshness, for that which now she perhaps
accounted my unfairness.

Then, again, would I ask myself, was I very sure of this? And so the two
questions were flung the one against the other; my conscience divided
itself into two parties, and they waged a war that filled me with a
depressing uncertainty.

In the end shame was overthrown, and I flung back my head with a
snort of assurance. I was doing no wrong. On the contrary, I was doing
right--both by myself and by Roxalanne. What matter that I was really
cheating her? What matter that I had said I would not leave Lavedan
until I had her promise, whilst in reality I had hurled my threat at
Saint-Eustache that I would meet him at Toulouse, and passed my word to
the Vicomtesse that I would succour her husband?

I gave no thought to the hidden threat with which Saint-Eustache had
retorted that from Lavedan to Toulouse was a distance of some twenty
leagues. Had he been a man of sterner purposes I might have been uneasy
and on my guard. But Saint-Eustache pshaw!

It is ill to underestimate an enemy, be he never so contemptible,
and for my disdain of the Chevalier I might have paid dearly had not
Fortune--which of late had been practising singular jests upon me after
seemingly abandoning me, returned to my aid at the last moment.

It was Saint-Eustache's purpose that I should never reach Toulouse
alive, for in all the world I was the one man he feared, the one man
who would encompass his undoing and destruction by a word. And so he had
resolved and disposed that I should be removed, and to accomplish this
he had left a line of bravi along the road I was to pass.

He had counted upon my lying the night in one of the intervening towns,
for the journey was over-long to be accomplished at a stretch, and
wherever I might chance to lie, there I should have to reckon with his
assassins. The nearer Toulouse--although I knew not this--the thicker
grew my danger. Into the very thick of it I rode; in the very thick of
it I lay, and all that came of it was that I obtained possession of one
more and overwhelming piece of evidence against my murderous Chevalier.
But I outrun my story.

It had been my purpose to change horses at Grenade, and so push on and
reach Toulouse that very night or in the early hours of the following
morning. At Grenade, however, there were no horses to be obta