"It is a mere nothing--the scratch of a pen," he said, carelessly, and indeed it very soon healed. The wound on his breast was doing nicely, too, and he began to talk of leaving for home very soon--as soon as he was able to travel. Carmontelle had written to his anxious sisters to calm their uneasy minds, and one day--it was a week after that tragic evening when he had rescued the prisoners--he held a very serious conversation with his friend over the subject of Little Nobody's future. Van Zandt had sat up in an easy-chair that day for the first time, and Marie had come in to see him. She looked bright and well again, and the young man shuddered as he thought how near she had been to death that night in the underground prison. "But for my timely thought, my terrible experiment, she must have been dead ere rescue came," he said to himself. "But she must never know. Perhaps she would shrink from me in horror did she but know the truth." Carmontelle had been very quiet while she remained in the room. He had watched both narrowly. When she had gone, he said, gravely: "Van Zandt, let us speak together as good men and true. Have you taken any thought for the little ma'amselle's future?" Van Zandt started and grew a shade paler. He scarcely understood this abruptness, this seriousness. "Her future?" he echoed, a little blankly. "I thought--I understood--that it was all planned out that night when we saved her. You were to educate her--afterward to make her your wife." Carmontelle frowned, and said, sternly: "Yes--but of course you understand that the plan is untenable now?" He looked straight into Van Zandt's beautiful blue-gray eyes with such a meaning expression that in a moment there rushed over the young man's mind a comprehension of the truth. Flushing darkly, he exclaimed: "Say no more. I understand you now," hoarsely; "you mean that--that noble child is--is compromised by her imprisonment with me those four long days?" Carmontelle, with a fierce throb of jealousy at his heart, answered: "Yes." Then, after a moment's blank silence on both sides, he added, sighing heavily: "Such is the cruel way of the world. For myself, Van Zandt, I know you are the soul of honor, chivalrous as the men of the South; and I can pay you no higher compliment than this. For her, I know she is pure as an angel. But--there is the cruel, carping world ready to point the finger of scorn always, and I--warmly as I love the girl--I could not have a bride of whom gossip could whisper even one blighting suspicion. The Carmontelles are very proud of their unblemished honor. I must not be the first to smirch it. I could have passed over her birth, her namelessness, for I could have given her my own proud name, and lifted her to my own station; but--this shadow from her misfortune in having shared your imprisonment is too dark for me to bear. My hopes are in ashes. Instead of being her husband, I must now claim the place of a father or a brother."