"Your servant, Messer Syndic," he said. "I heard that you had been inquiring for me in my absence, and I am here to place myself at your disposition. You are not looking----" he stopped short, in feigned surprise. "There is nothing wrong, I hope?" Had the scholar been such a man as Baudichon, Blondel's answer would have been one frenzied shriek of insults and reproaches. But face to face with Basterga's massive quietude, with his giant bulk, with that air, at once masterful and cynical, which proclaimed to those with whom he talked that he gave them but half his mind while reading theirs, the wrath of the smaller man cooled. A moment his lips writhed, without sound; then, "Wrong?" he cried, his voice harsh and broken. "Wrong? All is wrong!" "You are not well?" Basterga said, eyeing him with concern. "Well? I shall never be better! Never!" Blondel shrieked. And after a pause, "Curse you!" he added. "It is your doing!" Basterga stared. He was in the dark as to what had happened, though the Syndic's manner on leaving the bridge had prepared him for something. "My doing, Messer Blondel?" he said. "Why? What have I done?" "Done?" "Ay, done! It was not my fault," the scholar continued, with a touch of sternness, "that I could not offer you the _remedium_ on easy terms. Nor mine, that hard as the terms were, you did not accept them. Besides," he continued, slowly and with meaning, "Terque quaterque redit! You remember the Sibylline books? How often they were offered, and the terms? It is not too late, Messer Blondel--even now. While there is life there is hope, there is more than hope. There is certainty." "Is there?" Blondel cried; he extended a lean hand, shaking with vindictive passion. "Is there? Go and look in your casket, fool! Go and look in your steel box!" he hissed. "Go! And see if it be not too late!" For a moment Basterga peered at him, his brow contracted, his eyes screwed up. The blow was unexpected. Then, "Have you taken the stuff?" he muttered. "I? No! But she has!" And on that, seeing the change in the other's face--for, for once, the scholar's mask slipped and suffered his consternation to appear--Blondel laughed triumphantly: in torture himself, he revelled in a disaster that touched another. "She has! She has!" "She? Who?" "The girl of the house! Anne you call her! Curse her! child of perdition, as she is! She!" And he clawed the air. "She has taken it?" Basterga spoke incredulously, but his brow was damp, his cheeks were a shade more sallow than usual; he did not deceive the other's penetration. "Impossible!" he continued, striving to rally his forces. "Why should she take it? She has no illness, no disease! Try"--he swallowed something--"to be clear, man. Try to be clear. Who has told you this cock-and-bull story?" "It is the truth." "She has taken it?" "To give to her mother--yes." "And she?" "Has taken it? Yes."