Thoroughly puzzled, La Vireville watched her as, with set mouth and face as white as the paper itself, she wrote out the list he required. Why should his name so discompose her? M. de Kérouan, whom he had never met, had evidently not mentioned it to her while he was alive--possibly did not even know it himself. It was not as if their commands had been contiguous. But why should his 'agent' find the discovery so extremely disconcerting? Was it possible that she, like Mme. de Chaulnes . . .? No, that he could not credit for a moment. It was on the tip of his tongue to pursue the subject--and he knew he was rather a fool not to do so--but somehow he was too sorry for her to probe her distress to-night. She had but recently lost her lover, and she was so pale! When she gave him the list he merely thanked her, and bent over her hand for a moment with a grace oddly at variance with its surroundings. The hand in question was very cold. Once again, as he took up the rushlight, she began an apology, scarcely audible, for the poorness of his quarters, and the difficulty of getting to them. "A night in the hayloft used to be the summit of my ambition, Madame, when I was a child," replied he gaily. "I only hope that you will sleep as well as I shall." And with that he limped away to the stairs. The ascent, indeed, was not too easy to him. At the top a last prompting of curiosity urged him to glance back over his shoulder down into the room. But his hostess was no longer visible, and he opened the door at the top of the ladder-stairs to find himself in a small, bare apartment, containing little save a truckle-bed under the window, with a rush-bottomed chair beside it, a press built into the wall by the door, and a crucifix. Having ascertained that the crazy door possessed no means of fastening other than a latch, and a bolt on the outside, La Vireville set down the light on a chair and threw off his outer garments with celerity. He had the habit of seizing sleep when he could get it, and in Brittany a bed was something of a luxury. And though in Porhoët village he was probably less safe than he would have been sleeping, as usual, with his men in the lee of a hedge under the open sky, and knew it, and though his curiosity, if not his suspicions, had lately suffered a rousing prick, and though--more disturbing than either--his foot ached persistently, ere a quarter of an hour had elapsed he was in the enjoyment of a very refreshing slumber. (2)