"Dear Chevalier, do not forget the book--that register--I gave you to-night. Read it--read the last writing in it, and then you will know-- ah, bidemme--but you will know that her we love--ah, but you must read it and tell nobody till--till the right time comes! She hasn't held her tongue for naught, and it's only fair to do as she's done all along, and hold ours. Pardingue, but my heart hurts me!" she added suddenly, and catching the hand that held the little gold cane she kissed it with impulsive ardour. "You have been so good to me--oui-gia!" she said with a gulp, and then she dropped the hand and turned and fled to the boat rocking in the surf. The little Chevalier watched the boat glide out into the gloom of night, and waited till he knew that they must all be aboard Ranulph's schooner and making for the sea. Then he turned and went back to the empty house in the Rue d'Egypte. Opening the book Carterette had placed in his hands before they left the house, he turned up and scanned closely the last written page. A moment after, he started violently, his eyes dilating, first with wonder, then with a bewildered joy; and then, Protestant though he was, with the instinct of long-gone forefathers, he made the sacred gesture, and said: "Now I have not lived and loved in vain, thanks be to God!" Even as joy opened wide the eyes of the Chevalier, who had been sorely smitten through the friends of his heart, out at sea Night and Death were closing the eyes of another wan old man who had been a traitor to his country. For the boat of the fugitives had scarcely cleared reefs and rocks, and reached the open Channel, when Olivier Delagarde, uttering the same cry as when Ranulph and the soldiers had found him wounded in the Grouville road sixteen years before, suddenly started up from where he had lain mumbling, and whispering incoherently, "Ranulph--they've killed me!" fell back dead. True to the instinct which had kept him faithful to one idea for sixteen years, and in spite of the protests of Mattingley and Carterette--of the despairing Carterette who felt the last thread of her hopes snap with his going--Ranulph made ready to leave them. Bidding them good-bye, he placed his father's body in the rowboat, and pulling back to the shore of St. Aubin's Bay with his pale freight, carried it on his shoulders up to the little house where he had lived so many years. There he kept the death-watch alone. CHAPTER XXXV