"So you really disliked my manner?" he said, in his own slow, pensive way. "I remember, years ago, an ancient Duchesse of the Faubourg telling me it had a savour of the _Vieille Cour_. I was intensely flattered then, for I was very young. I am not sure that I ought not to be more gratified now. I think I am. The instincts of hate are truer than those of love. Mde. de Latrêaumont was as kind as a mother to me, and might have been deceived. I have no more to say. You know the conditions: if you transgress them by a hair's breadth, you will hear of it--not from me." He left the room without another word. It is doubtful if Knowles heard that last taunt, or knew that his visitor was gone. He had buried his face again in his hands; and so, for minutes sat motionless. All at once he started up, went to the outer "oak," and dropped the bolt which made his servant's pass-key useless, and then returned to his old seat, still apparently half stunned and stupefied. Do you think the forger and traitor escaped easily? It may be so; but remember the exaggerated importance that Harding attached to his social position and advancement. I believe that many, whose earthly ruin has just been completed, have felt less miserable, and hopeless, and spirit-broken, than the man who sat there, far into the twilight, staring at the fire with haggard eyes, that never saw the red coals turn grey. It is true, that when Nina Lenox heard from Alan a _résumé_ of the day's proceedings, she decided at once that the retribution was wholly inadequate and unsatisfactory. But one need not multiply instances to prove the truism, if women are exacting in love, they are thrice as exacting in revenge. I cannot remember where I read the old romaunt of the knight who came just in time to save his lady from the burning, by vanquishing her traducer in the lists. The story is commonplace and trite to a degree. I only remember the one instance that made it remarkable. The conqueror stood with his foot on the neck of the enemy; his chivalrous heart melted towards the vanquished, who, after all, had done his devoir gallantly in an evil cause. He would have suffered him to rise and live, but he chanced to glance inquiringly towards the pale woman at the stake, and, says the chronicler, "by the bending of her brows, and the blink of her eyes, he wist that she bade him--'not spare!'" So the good knight sighed heavily, and, turning his sword-point once more to the neck of the fallen man, drove the keen steel through mail and flesh and bone. Ah, my friend! may it never be your lot or mine, to lie prone at the mercy of a woman whom we have wronged past hope of forgiveness; be sure, that eyes and brows will speak as plainly as they did a thousand years agone, and their murderous message will be much the same. CHAPTER XXIII. DIPLOMACY AT A DISCOUNT.