"What did the stolen ten thousand pounds matter to him? It mattered prison to Rushworth, Joanna's father--think of the horror of it! She would have died from the disgrace--her mother too. And the devil jested, Asticot. He talked of Rushworth being smitten with the slings and black arrows of outrageous fortune. _Nom de Dieu_, I could have strangled him! But what could I do? Two years! To go out of her life for two years as if I had been struck dead! Yet after two years I could come back and say what I chose. I signed the contract. I went out of the house. I kept my word. _Noblesse oblige._ I was Gaston de Nérac. I came back to Paris. I worked night and day for eighteen months. I had genius. I had hope. I had youth. I had faith. She would never marry the Comte de Verneuil. She would not marry anybody. I counted the days. Meanwhile he posed as the saviour of Simon Rushworth. He poisoned Joanna's mind against me. He lied, invented infamies. This I have heard lately. He confessed it all to her before the devil took him as a play-fellow. Of one who had so cruelly treated her all things were possible. She half believed them. At last he told her I was dead. An acquaintance had found me in a Paris hospital and had paid for my funeral. She had no reason for disbelief. He pressed his suit. Her father and mother urged her--the fool Rushworth soon afterwards came to another crisis, and de Verneuil again stepped in and demanded Joanna as the price. She is gentle. She has a heart tenderer than that of any woman who ever lived. One day I heard she had married him. My God! It is thirteen years ago." He poured some water into the syrup glass and gulped it down. I remained silent. I had never seen him give way to violent emotion--save once--when he broke the fiddle over Mr. Pogson's head. Presently he said with a whimsical twist of his lips: "You may have heard me speak of a crusader's mace." "Yes, Master." "That's when I used it. I had an inspiration," he remarked quietly. "Master," said I after a while, "if Madame de Verneuil believed you to be dead, it must have been a shock to her when she saw you alive at Aix-les-Bains." "She learned soon after her marriage that her husband had been mistaken. Her mother had caught sight of me in Venice. Madame de Verneuil never forgave him the lie. She is gentle, my son, but she has character." It was after that, I think, that the frozen look came into her eyes. Thenceforward she was ice to the Comte de Verneuil, who for pleasant, domestic companionship had to resort to his rare apes. No wonder his madness took the form of the fixed idea that he had murdered Paragot. "After all," he mused, "there must have been some good in the man. He desired to make amends. He sent me the old contract, so that his wife should not find it after his death. He confessed everything to her before he died. There is a weak spot somewhere in the heart of the Devil himself. I shouldn't wonder if he were devoted to a canary."