"To Paris!" echoed Douglas. "I am afraid you will scarcely be welcome there. The base hint you gave about being a priest will surely lead you into trouble--for it is a lie, as my brother has discovered," and he saw the other start at his words. But he went on: "Moreover, there are many ardent adherents of the Stuart cause in Paris. How do you imagine they will receive the intelligence that you, a supposed adherent yourself, endeavoured to betray three others to their doom in London? Lord Fordingbridge, take my advice, do not go to Paris." In truth, he had no intention of going to Paris, as has been already told. After much deliberation, when he stole away from his house at Kensington, and during the time occupied in escaping to France, he had been meditating much upon where he should live, where go to until the trouble he had brought upon himself by his own evil actions should have blown over. Money he did not want, having a large sum in France that had been invested by his father, as well as that which he could procure from his property in England, and so, at last, he decided that he would for some time at least take up his abode at Amiens. There he was comparatively near Paris if he wished at any time to visit the capital, and at the same time he was but a day's journey to the seaports of Calais and Boulogne, should he find it necessary at any time to quit France suddenly. Full of these ideas, and certain that it would not be long before he could either return to England or take up his position in Paris, he had come on to Amiens and was now staying at a larger inn than the _Croix Blanche_ under the name of Mr. Chester--which had been his mother's. He had come out that night, partly driven forth by the shouts and carousings that were going on in his own hostelry in the same manner that they were in all the others in the city, and which, with his brain in the state it had been for some time now, were maddening to him. And partly, also, he had been driven forth by discovering that a large group of English visitors had arrived during the afternoon, the very sight of whom was terrifying to him, since amongst them were one or two young men of fashion whom he had more than once met at King George's levees. Therefore, he had determined to wander about the city until it was time to go to bed, and then to return and keep his room until the English party had gone on to Paris the next morning and the hubbub of the fair was over. But near the cathedral he had been attacked and robbed of his money and trinkets--which, for precaution, as he imagined, he had kept on his person--and in endeavouring to follow the thieves he had stumbled on Douglas Sholto. "No one would know that I was in Paris," he said, with a cunning leer in his eyes, as he answered the other's remark. "No one, no one." "On the contrary," replied Douglas, "everyone would know--Bertie, my brother, your wife, all."