argaret.

"No, no. I am glad--glad as never before. Let us go. It will keep. It
will keep." She looked at him with wonder. They climbed the bank and
went up the hill across the Woodlands, Andrew Hamilton's estate, and
homeward by the middle ferry at High Street, no one speaking.

The girl, troubled and apprehensive, walked on, getting now and then
from the bonnet's seclusion a quick side glance at a face a little
flushed and wearing a look of unwonted satisfaction. Schmidt was as
silent as his companions. Comedy again, he thought, and as ever behind
it the shadow tragedy. "If I were that man, I should be afraid--a
secretary of this accursed envoy. I must know more. Ah, here is the
other man behind the every-day De Courval."

De Courval went in and up-stairs to his room and at the five-o'clock
supper showed no sign of the storm which had swept over him. After the
meal he followed his mother, and as usual read aloud to her a chapter of
the French Bible. Then at dusk he pulled out on the river, and, finding
refreshment in a cold plunge, rowed to shore, returning in full control
of the power to consider with Schmidt, as now he knew he must do, a
situation not so simple as it seemed when he set eyes on his enemy.

"I have been waiting for you, Rene. I guess enough to know this for a
very grave matter. You will want to tell me."

"I have often wanted to talk to you, but, as you may or may not know, it
was also too painful to discuss until the need came; but now it has
come."

"You will talk to me, Rene, or not, as seems the better to you."

"I shall speak, and frankly; but, sir, wait a little."

Without replying further, the German took up a book and read. The young
man let fall his head on his hands, his elbows on a table. He had tried
to forget, but now again with closed eyes and, with that doubtful gift
of visual recall already mentioned he saw the great, dimly lighted hall
at Avignon, the blood-stained murderers, the face of his father, his
vain appeal. The tears rained through his fingers. He seemed to hear
again: "Yvonne! Yvonne!" and at last to see, with definiteness sharpened
by the morning's scene, the sudden look of ferocity in a young man's
face--a man not much older than himself. He had thought to hear from it
a plea for mercy. Ah, and to-day he had seen it gay with laughter. One
day it would not laugh. He wiped away tears as he rose. The German
gentleman caught him to his broad breast. "What is it, my son