tchie,"--he was still talking in French--"I appeal to you, who are
a man of affairs,"--and he swept me a bow,--"if a captain would risk
taking a fugitive to France for eight hundred livres? Pardieu, I could
get no farther than the Balize for that. Monsieur," he added meaningly,
"you have an interest in this. There are two of us to go."

The amazing effrontery of this move made me gasp. Yet it was neither the
Vicomtesse nor myself who answered him. We turned by common impulse
to Antoinette, and she was changed. Her breath came quickly, her eyes
flashed, her anger made her magnificent.

"It is not true," she cried, "you know it is not true."

He lifted his shoulders and smiled.

"You are my brother, and I am ashamed to acknowledge you. I was willing
to give my last sou, to sell my belongings, to take from the poor to
help you--until you defamed a good man. You cannot make me believe," she
cried, unheeding the color that surged into her cheeks, "you cannot make
me believe that he would use this money. You cannot make me believe it."

"Let us do him the credit of thinking that he means to repay it," said
Auguste.

Antoinette's eyes filled with tears,--tears of pride, of humiliation,
ay, and of an anger of which I had not thought her capable. She was
indeed a superb creature then, a personage I had not imagined. Gathering
up her gown, she passed Auguste and turned on him swiftly.

"If you were to bring that to him," she said, pointing to the bag in
my hand, "he would not so much as touch it. To-morrow I shall go to the
Ursulines, and I thank God I shall never see you again. I thank God I
shall no longer be your sister. Give Monsieur the bundle," she said to
the frightened Andre, who still stood by the hedge; "he may need food
and clothes for his journey."

She left us. We stood watching her until her gown had disappeared
amongst the foliage. Andre came forward and held out the bundle to
Auguste, who took it mechanically. Then Madame La Vicomtesse motioned
to Andre to leave, and gave me a glance, and it was part of the deep
understanding of her I had that I took its meaning. I had my forebodings
at what this last conversation with Auguste might bring forth, and I
wished heartily that we were rid of him.

"Monsieur de St. Gre," I said, "I understood you to say that a ship is
lying at the English Turn some five leagues below us, on which you are
to take passage at once."

He turned and glared at me, some devilish ret