"Because in that case, Madame," responded La Vireville promptly, "I should never have got him to help me in my little plan. He would never have gone near the lock-up. He was sufficiently insubordinate as it was. And, as events turned out," he added gravely, "it was a good thing that I never even hinted at it. He would have been quite capable of cutting your throat when he got you alone." "He did not seem very much pleased with me as it was," remarked Mme. de Guéfontaine pensively. "He accused me of having----" She stopped abruptly. "He made the same remark to me in the cottage," observed La Vireville gravely, but with laughter in his eyes. "I trust that, like me, you were quick to acknowledge its justice. I told him that you had done it with a--knife." If he had wished to put an end to their conversation La Vireville certainly succeeded, for at that Mme. de Guéfontaine, murmuring something about Henri and a meal, arose and left him. She had, for the time being, quite lost her beautiful pallor. (3) La Vireville had his way in the end, and rode with them at dusk to the sea, and Mme. de Guéfontaine walked beside the grey horse, throwing a glance now and then at the bandaged foot, which his rider could not get into the stirrup. "It was all my fault," she said, when they had gone a little way, and L'Estournel, place of refuge and memories, was a memory once more. "Pardon me, Madame," objected La Vireville from above her, "it was not you who dropped a barrel on my toes." She gave a rather impatient sigh. "Do you always jest about yourself, M. le Chevalier?" "Madame, what else would you have me to do? Does it not strike you as humorous, you who know the conditions of our warfare in Brittany, that when fighting begins again I should have, for a time at least, to lead my men over hedges and through the broom in a litter, which is the only method of conveyance that I can think of at the moment?" He laughed under his breath. "At any rate, my foot is a change of site for an injury. Last time, not so long ago, it was a knock on the head that I acquired." "And in whose cause, pray, did you receive that?" "But in the usual--no, parbleu, when I come to think of it, it was an extra. It was for--a child, a small boy." "And what, if one may ask, were you doing that you got knocked on the head for a small boy?" "I was trying to convey him back to England. He had come to France by--mistake. I had some trouble over it." "And is he back in England?" The rider nodded. "Safely back in Cavendish Square by now, I trust." "Cavendish Square?" said she, surprised, for she knew London. "Then he was an English boy?" "No, French, the son of a friend of mine, the Marquis de Flavigny, who lives with his Scotch father-in-law there. And I think I may count the child himself as a friend, if it comes to that." "Ah, it was not for a person unknown, then, that time--or for one who had tried to do you an injury?"