It was quite clear to him why Mme. de Guéfontaine had taken him for her late brother's aggressor. He had confessed to his name, he had mentioned having been at Coblentz at the time, and he bore a close family resemblance to his kinsman--close enough, at least, to deceive anyone who relied merely on a verbal description; for it was tolerably certain that Mme. de Guéfontaine had never seen the Marquis de la Vireville. Evidently she had been devotedly attached to her brother; had shared in his schemes, worked and plotted for him here at Porhoët, in a position of no small danger, and then, fresh from the shock of that brother's violent death, was called upon--so she thought--to shelter and to help to install in his place the man who had been his worst enemy! She was a woman of strong feelings; she had found the situation, as she had declared to him, intolerable, and in a moment of wild impulse she had resolved to put a term to it and to avenge her brother in one and the same act. And, reviewing the episode dispassionately, La Vireville found he could not blame her overmuch . . . especially as she had failed. True, there was always something of a nauseous flavour about delation, but the matter of the cold steel had a primitive and heroic touch--Jael and Sisera. "And if," he said to himself, "if I had given her a minute longer she need not have been put to the shift of betraying me to the authorities!" . . . Yet, after all, he doubted whether she would have had the nerve to use the knife. And, whatever her intentions with regard to the National Guard, it was by no means certain that she had carried them out. He did not see how she could have done so in the time. And because he found himself oddly reluctant to associate her with the idea of just that form of treachery, he settled that she had _not_ had time. . . . But she was, no doubt of it, a remarkable woman! And so, commending her spirit, as though he had not nearly been its victim, La Vireville arrived, as the long, featureless day was beginning to close in, at a certain decision. When the dusk had quite fallen the owl's cry, as he had expected, came prudently to his ears. He answered it, and in a little while the countenance of Grain d'Orge was visible at the window, whence the misleading sheet still trailed into the garden. "Come in," said his leader, without moving from the chair whereon he sat, with his legs extended on another. "A pretty sort of refuge you selected for me!" The Chouan scrambled over the sill on to the bed, and broke into violent and ashamed protestations, mingled with horrible curses on the unknown informer. It was plain that he did not suspect where the guilt really lay. "Never mind," remarked La Vireville carelessly. "I have fallen upon circumstances which you could not possibly have foreseen, and I harbour no grudge against you, mon gars. But have you any plan for getting me away?"