"Whatever it was I missed it," des Ageaux answered with decision, and in a somewhat louder tone. "If you will step up here--but I fear you are not well, M. le Vicomte?" He spoke truly, the Vicomte was not well. He had had a shock. Cast off his son as he might, hate him as he might--and hate him he did, as one who had turned against him and brought dishonour on his house--that shot in the night had shaken him. He leant against the wall, his lips white, his breath coming quickly. And a minute or more elapsed before he recovered himself and stood upright. He kept his eyes averted from des Ageaux. He turned instead to Roger. Whether he feared for himself and would not be alone, or he suspected some complicity between the two, he signed to the lad to take up the lanthorn and go before him. And, moving stiffly and unsteadily across the floor, he got himself in silence to the door. With something between a bow and a glance--it was clear that he could not trust his tongue--he was out of the room. The Lieutenant sat on his bed for some time, expecting Roger to return. But the lad did not appear, and after an interval des Ageaux took on himself to search the staircase. It was untenanted. The girl, using the chance he had afforded her, had escaped. CHAPTER III. STILL WATERS TROUBLED. Had Bonne de Villeneuve, a day earlier, paid a visit much in fashion at that time, and consulted the "dark man" who, in an upper room on the wall of Angouleme, followed the stars and cast horoscopes, and was reputed to have foretold the death of the first Duke of Joyeuse as that nobleman passed southwards to the field of Coutras, she might have put faith in such of the events of the night as the magic crystal showed her; until it came to mirror, faint as an evening mist beside the river, her thoughts after the event. Then, had it foretold that, as she lay quaking in her bed, she would be thinking neither of the brother, whose desperate venture wrung her heart, nor of Roger, her dearer self, but of a stranger--a stranger, whose name she had not known six hours, and of whose past she knew nothing, she would have paused, refusing credence. She would have smiled at the phantasm of the impossible.