"It is I, sister," he said, gloomily.

"You--my poor Jean! you!"

He surveyed himself from head to foot, and said, with a sneering laugh:

"Really, I should not like to meet myself at dusk in the forest."

Marie-Anne shuddered. She fancied that a threat lurked beneath these
ironical words, beneath this mockery of himself.

"What a life yours must be, my poor brother! Why did you not come
sooner? Now, I have you here, I shall not let you go. You will not
desert me. I need protection and love so much. You will remain with me?"

"It is impossible, Marie-Anne."

"And why?"

A fleeting crimson suffused Jean Lacheneur's cheek; he hesitated for a
moment, then:

"Because I have a right to dispose of my own life, but not of yours," he
replied. "We can no longer be anything to each other. I deny you to-day,
that you may be able to deny me to-morrow. Yes, I renounce you, who are
my all--the only person on earth whom I love. Your most cruel enemies
have not calumniated you more foully than I----"

He paused an instant, then he added:

"I have said openly, before numerous witnesses, that I would never set
foot in a house that had been given you by Chanlouineau."

"Jean! you, my brother! said that?"

"I said it. It must be supposed that there is a deadly feud between us.
This must be, in order that neither you nor Maurice d'Escorval can be
accused of complicity in any deed of mine."

Marie-Anne stood as if petrified.

"He is mad!" she murmured.

"Do I really have that appearance?"

She shook off the stupor that paralyzed her, and seizing her brother's
hands:

"What do you intend to do?" she exclaimed. "What do you intend to do?
Tell me; I will know."

"Nothing! let me alone."

"Jean!"

"Let me alone," he said, roughly, disengaging himself.

A horrible presentiment crossed Marie-Anne's mind.

She stepped back, and solemnly, entreatingly, she said:

"Take care, take care, my brother. It is not well to tamper with these
matters. Leave to God's justice the task of punishing those who have
wronged us."

But nothing could move Jean Lacheneur, or divert him from his purpose.
He uttered a hoarse, discordant laugh, then striking his gun heavily
with his hand, he exclaimed:

"Here is justice!"

Appalled and distressed beyond measure, Marie-Anne sank into a chair.
She discerned in her brother's mind the same fixed, fatal idea which had
lured her father on to destruction--the idea for which he had sacrifice