“You require me to state my acceptance of your proposal specifically. I now do this. I will marry Gabrielle. She shall never learn from me that her parents never expressed any such wish for our marriage as she has been told. I will use my utmost efforts to compel her, if need be, to submit to the Duke’s wishes. And I will act in every way faithfully as you may direct in any other plans you have. “The fortune I shall receive with Gabrielle will be all I need--that and the pardon; for I seek no Court position, favour, or influence. “Send me the written assurance of the pardon, and by the time the messenger can return hither, I may be ready to set out myself. “GERARD DE COBALT.” “By the God above us all, what callous infamy!” exclaimed Gerard, passionately, stirred to the depths by the letter, whose full meaning he well understood. But it was otherwise with Gabrielle, who saw in it no more than an attempt to slander him; and she mistook his burning words for indignation at the effort to ruin him in her eyes. “Infamy indeed,” she said warmly. “Would that I knew the author of so vile a slander! If I thought for a moment that Denys----” “No, no, Gabrielle. Don’t even speak such a thought,” cried Lucette. “I had forgotten him,” said Gerard. “I will help bear him into the house. We will deal with this afterwards, Gabrielle.” “Except to find the villain who forged the letter, there is no more to do in it, Gerard. They little know me who think I could be moved by so contemptible a lie. I could ask your pardon for having read it to the end--could almost be vexed with you, indeed, for having caused me to read it. Shall I tear it now?” He was bending over Denys and looked up quickly. “No, I will keep it; and some one some day shall pay a heavy reckoning,” he answered as he took it. Then with Lucette’s help he lifted Denys and took him into the house. Gabrielle was following, when the Duke said hurriedly to de Proballe-- “Go and detain her on the terrace. I must speak with her; but first will think a space. I am on the rack.” He had been profoundly moved by the scene and was intensely agitated. He had let the letter be read without interference--involving though it did both de Proballe and himself--in the belief that the revelation of Gerard’s baseness would change her feelings; and the unshaken confidence she had shown in Gerard’s honour was to his jealousy as biting acid to an open wound. With a bitterness beyond words to describe and far too galling for his selfish soul to endure, he saw now that in causing Gerard to be brought to Morvaix for his own purpose with Gabrielle, he had but plunged a sword into his own heart. The villain had played his part so well that he had won her love; and the wound burned and stabbed and maddened him with its pain.