"Yes; but the spark who walks with you on the north terrace in the twilight----" "_O ciel!_ what are you saying?" "Yes, and whom I have caught so often lurking among the shrubbery and in the avenue at night; he, at least, is _not_ gone to Rennes. An ugly fellow he is too, with a mark like a bullet-hole in each cheek. Eh, Mademoiselle Angelique, what say you to this?" I did not hear the girl's reply, and they moved away from the room adjoining mine; but I had heard enough to cause me intense alarm. I had been twice on the north terrace in the evening with Angelique; but _who_ was the lurker detected by Jacquot in the shrubbery and avenue? "An ugly fellow with a mark like a bullet-hole in each cheek!" My heart foreboded in a moment that he must be the ruffian Hautois. If he had traced me to the chateau, I was lost indeed! No sooner was Jacquot gone, than Angelique came to me, and repeated all that I had previously heard, adding that some disguise was necessary now; but we knew not what kind to adopt. In the meantime, my uniform--my poor red coat, which I had first donned with such pride at Rothbury--was concealed or destroyed, and she brought me a hunting-suit of green cloth from the wardrobe of the absent count. Still complete seclusion was necessary, and I could only take the air in the evening, on a secluded terrace or upper bartizan of the chateau, where Mademoiselle de Broglie and her attendant frequently sat in a kind of bower formed by the projection of a turret and a mass of wild roses, and where they read, chatted, or worked. I had the pleasure of spending several evenings with Mademoiselle de Broglie there, and with each of these lovely summer evenings, when the purple shadow of the chateau fell far across the weedy lake, whose waters rippled in opal tints, and when the Druid monolith on the opposite rocks shone like a pillar of flame in the crimson light of the setting sun, it seemed to me that I was becoming less and less anxious about my escape from Bourgneuf, my flight from Brittany, and my return to the army. Why was this? I asked my heart, and could only look for an answer in the quiet deep eyes of Jacqueline. Her emerald ring was still on my finger, and as I looked at it again and again, and then on the lovely donor, the words of Charters, when I first showed him the ring on that morning near our camp at Paramé, came back to my memory like a prediction about to be verified. CHAPTER VII. LOVE AND ILLUSION.