"Because," he began, speaking slowly and measuredly, and Denise de Mortain had no cause to complain now that her son did not look her squarely in the face--"because two hours ago I saw Fernande stealing out of the chateau, wrapped in a dark cloak and alone, and making her way across the park. I did not want her to see me, so I stole to the gates and there watched for her coming. I wished to know whither she was going and I was determined to follow her. I watched and I waited, marvelling why she tarried. She did not come, and then I realized what a fool I had been. Whilst I had been standing on guard outside the great gates, she had slipped out by the side door in the wall, and I did not know whither she had gone. I was ready to dash my head against the iron gates; and there I stood, stupid, semi-imbecile, marvelling what I should do. Suddenly a passer-by came along and I hailed him. I asked him if he had seen a lady on the high road walking unattended and closely wrapped in a dark cloak. He answered me yes, and pointed the way she went. I thanked him, and as soon as his back was turned I started to run in the wake, as I thought, of Fernande. Then I came to a cross-road, where there was a sign-post, one arm of which bore the legend: 'La Frontenay,' and the other, 'La Vieuville.' La Vieuville, where my brother dwells! I spelt out every letter. I saw that it was distant five kilometres. La Vieuville! Fernande had gone to La Vieuville to betray us all to Ronnay de Maurel!" "That is false, I'll swear," exclaimed Madame, "and you, Laurent, are mad to imagine anything so monstrous against the girl whom you profess to love." "Mad!" he riposted. "Of course I am mad! Did I not tell you that I had become mad?" "What were you doing outside the gates of this chateau at nine o'clock to-night when...." "When I should have been at Mortain," he broke in with a strident laugh, which seemed to go right through his mother's heart like a knife. "At Mortain, drilling a few oafs in the use of muskets which they haven't got. What was I doing here? Did I not say that I was watching over my property? I could not stay away, Mother," he cried wildly. "I could not! I suffered too much. I was going mad." "So you--my son--Laurent Marquis de Mortain, preferred to turn deserter?" she asked coldly. "Mother!" "I have yet to learn how it comes that when my son is under orders from his chiefs, at the hour when the destinies of his King and his country are at stake, how it comes that he has deserted his post."