He walked over until he was within two or three feet of his cousin. “I have something that I want to ask you,” he said, in a cool, conversational tone. “Since my return from Brittany I have received several letters from Lucienne. She has changed perceptibly; she evidently is not happy. Can you account for this in any way?” Louis gave a start. “I?” he exclaimed, looking up. “How should I?” The Marquis sat down on the stump of a tree near him. “Because,” he said very calmly, “you are the last member of the family who saw much of her before she left France. Besides, I happen to know that you are the person best able to explain it to me. It has taken me a long while to ask you this question, but now that I have asked it I mean to have an answer.” He could not, had he sought with the most diabolical ingenuity, have given his query a more entangling form. But Louis looked very straight at him, his mouth suddenly set. “I have not a notion what you mean,” he replied; “and I certainly cannot account for any change in her.” “Yes,” observed Gilbert in a meditative tone, “I expected you to do that. You could not very well do anything else. Unfortunately I know that it is not true.” A red flush swept over the Vicomte’s face and ebbed away as suddenly, leaving him white to the lips, and for the moment speechless. He was so obviously trying hastily to recall some way in which Gilbert might have known his denial to be false that Château-Foix half contemptuously spared him the trouble. “On the 7th of July last year,” he said, “you said something which has left me with the knowledge, ever since, that you were the person to explain. Tell me what happened in Paris!” Saint-Ermay pulled himself up on to the log behind him. “Tell me what happened on the 7th of July!” he retorted. “It was the night that you were delirious in the loft at Pézé.” “Then I did——” broke out Louis, clenching his hands. “And you . . . all this time. . . .” Gilbert took no notice, but went on in the same even tone. “Tell me what happened in Paris. You have done what is required, in the way of denial at least, of a man of honour.” His lip curled for a second. “Besides, I am going to marry her. Yes,” he repeated with intense meaning, “I am going to marry her, whatever has happened.” He had found the key to make Louis speak. “Good God!” exclaimed the Vicomte, “you don’t think——” The Marquis did not move a muscle. “I don’t know,” he said. Saint-Ermay sprang to his feet. “You can’t think it, Gilbert! I will give you my word of honour—I will swear it by anything you please. If you refuse to believe me it is your own doing. . . . My God, you _must_ believe me!” Still with his horrible and judicial calm Gilbert surveyed his cousin, shaken so violently from his ordinary nonchalance. At last he said slowly: “Yes, in this instance I will believe you.”