On my honour, nothing. And I must offer you my apologies."

"As for the structure--" added Dieppe, shrugging his shoulders.

"Yes?" cried Paul, with renewed interest.

"Its purpose is to divide the garden into two portions. No more and no
less, I assure you."

Paul's face took on an ugly expression.

"I am at such a disadvantage," he observed, "that I cannot complain of
M. le Comte's making me the subject of pleasantry. Under other
circumstances I might raise different emotions in him. Perhaps I shall
have my opportunity."

"When you find me, sir, prowling about other people's gardens by
night--"

"Prowling!" interrupted Paul, fiercely.

"Well, then," said Dieppe, with an air of courteous apology, "shall we
say skulking?"

"You shall pay for that!"

"With pleasure, if you convince me that it is a gentleman who asks
satisfaction."

Paul de Roustache smiled. "At my convenience," he said, "I will give
you a reference which shall satisfy you most abundantly." He drew
back, lifted his hat, and bowed.

"I shall await it with interest," said Dieppe, returning the
salutation, and then folding his arms and watching Paul's retreat down
the hill. "The fellow brazened it out well," he reflected; "but I
shall hear no more of him, I fancy. After all, police-agents don't
fight duels with--why, with Counts, you know!" And his laugh rang out
in hearty enjoyment through the night air. "Ha, ha--it 's not so easy
to put salt on old Dieppe's tail!" With a sigh of satisfaction he
turned round, as though to go back to the house. But his eye was
caught by a light in the window next to his own; and the window was
open. The Captain stood and looked up, and Monsieur Guillaume, who had
overheard his little soliloquy and discovered from it a fact of great
interest to himself, seized the opportunity of rising from behind his
bush and stealing off down the hill after Paul de Roustache.

"Ah," thought the Captain, as he gazed at the window, "if there were no
such thing as honour or loyalty, as friendship--"

"Sir," said a timid voice at his elbow.

Dieppe shot round, and then and there lost his heart. One sight of her
a man might endure and be heart-whole, not two. There, looking up at
him with the most bewitching mouth, the most destructive eyes, was the
lady whom he had seen at the end of the passage. Certainly she was the
most irresistible creature he had ever met; so he declared to himself,
not, indeed, for the