For quite easily they might have fallen in with Vlaye's people on the road and been taken; or with M. de Vlaye himself, and with that there had been an end of the plan. But they had escaped these dangers. And yet Roger was not content; still he rode with a gloomy brow and pinched lips. The longer he thought of his sister's plan, the more he suspected and the less he liked it. There was in it a little which he did not understand, and more which he understood too well. His sister and M. de Vlaye! He hated the collocation; he hated to think that she must be left, willingly and by her own act, in the adventurer's power; and this at a moment when disappointment would aggravate a temper tried by the attack on him and by the part which the Vicomte had played in it. On what did she depend for her safety, for her honour, for all that she put wantonly at stake? On his respect? His friendship? Or his love? "I will take her place," she had said. Could it be that she was willing, that she desired, to take it altogether? Was she, after the rebuffs, after the scornful and contumelious slight which M. de Vlaye had put upon her, willing still to seek him, willing still to be in his power? It seemed so. Certainly it could not be denied that she was seeking him, and that he, her brother, was escorting her. In that light people would look upon his action. The thought stung him, and he halted midway on the woodland track that descended the farther side of the hill. His face wore a mixture of shame and appeal--with ill-humour underlying both. "See here, Odette," he said abruptly, "I do not see the end of this." Though she raised her eyebrows contemptuously, a faint tinge of colour crept into her face. "I thought," she replied, "that the end was to save this little fool who is too weak to save herself!" "But you?" "Oh, for me?" contemptuously. "Take no heed of me. I am of other stuff, and can manage my own affairs." "You think so," he retorted. "But the Captain of Vlaye, he, too, is of other stuff." "Do you fancy I am afraid of M. de Vlaye?" she answered. And her eyes flashed scorn on him. "You may be! You should be!" with a glance which marked his deformity and stabbed the sense of it deep into his heart. "How should you be otherwise, seeing that in no circumstances could you be a match for him! But I? I say again that I am of other stuff." "All the same," he muttered darkly, "I would not go on----" "Would not go on?" she retorted in mockery. "Not with your sweet Countess in danger? Not with the dear light of your eyes in Vlaye's arms? Not go on? Oh, brave lover! Oh, brave man! Not go on, and your Countess, your pretty Countess----" "Be silent!" he cried. She stung him to rage. "Ah! We go back then?" But he could not face that, he could not say yes to that; and, defeated, he turned in dumb sullen anger and resumed the road.