And yet, how her eyes had moistened in dwelling on mine, how they had dropped before my look, how she had yielded to my embrace, how she had stood still and unresisting in my arms! No, no, they were wrong! De Berquin had lied, Blaise and Frojac were stolid fools, capable of making only the most obvious inference, and I was a contemptible wretch to falter in my faith in her for an instant! She was the victim of a set of circumstances. She had reason for her hasty departure, she would make all clear in a few words. On, on, my horse, that I may hear those words, that my heart may rejoice! How soon shall we come up to her? How far ahead is she? How near to Clochonne? On! She is true, I know it. On! It may be even for my sake that she is endangering herself. On, that I may be at her side to shield her! On, for of late I have passed all the hours of the day with her, all the nights near her, her presence has been the breath of life to me, it is a new and unwonted and intolerable thing to be away from her, and I madly thirst and hunger for the sight of her! On, good horse! Yet, torturing thought, how the story explained all that had seemed strange! How it fitted so many facts! At the inn at Fleurier we had overheard the plan suggested by Montignac for my capture, the employment of a spy who was to find my hiding place, send word of it, then plan an ambush for me. Then the lady had come to the inn. Perhaps she was one who had already some kind of relations with the governor and had now come purposely to meet him. What had passed between her and the governor we had not overheard. It might easily have been the proposal by him, and the acceptance by her, of the mission against me. Such a task might better be entrusted to a woman. Catherine herself had employed women to entrap men who would have been on their guard against men. Certain Huguenot gentlemen had been especially susceptible to the charms of her accomplished decoys. Then the governor and his secretary had gone, and the latter had reappeared with De Berquin. It might really be that this woman, whether she were Mlle. de Varion, or whether she merely took that name in order to get my confidence without having to make the risky pretence of being a Protestant, was desired by Montignac and yet disliked him, and that De Berquin had been hired indeed to hold her forcibly for the secretary after she had accomplished her mission. But her ingenuous signs of a tender feeling for me? A device to blind me and win my trust, and so, through me, get the confidence of my supposed friend, La Tournoire. Her grief on the journey? Mere pretence, in order to bear out her story and enlist my sympathy. Her periods of silence and meditation? She was thinking out the details of her plot. Her questions about La Tournoire? A means of learning what manner of man she would have to deal with, and of finding out his hiding-place at a time when it would be easiest to despatch her boy with a description of it to the governor.