"No more blunders!" returned the abbé, sternly. "You have not the skill to read her. Do not forget that it was by your wrong-headedness and bungling that you brought about your own defeat. Remember the terms of the agreement which was to bring you back among us. You were to be guided by me absolutely, and abstain from silly little private plots which could only prove disastrous to us both." Mademoiselle was silent, and her heavy mobile brows shaped themselves into something like a scowl. She bit her thick red lips and smiled an engaging smile, as she patted the abbé with a fan, playfully. "Of course, I will do as you bid," she said, "but you must not look so cross. I am all gratitude for your many kindnesses and too glad of so skilled a guide." Then as she turned away there were lines about her mouth that were not pretty to look upon, and a sullen shade upon her brow, that was gone again like a summer thunder-cloud. The classically-modelled bosom of mademoiselle covered a black well of bitterness. She loathed herself for having bungled; she hated Gabrielle with an all-absorbing hate as the author of her discomfiture; she detested the abbé for his domineering ways--and Clovis for not having defended her. She hated all and everyone in that she had accidentally been kept in the dark as to the real owner of the fortune, whereby she had been betrayed into a pitfall. As she was being ignominiously conducted to Blois, like a thief taken in the act, a boiling geyser of venom had scalded her cheeks; and as she writhed behind a lace handkerchief she registered a vow to be avenged on Gabrielle some day a hundred-fold for that which she had borne at her hands. The knowledge did not tend to appease her wrath that without outside help she would be incapable of fulfilling the vow. The devil will do much to assist his own, but his methods are not artistically complete, and at a critical moment he whisks into space with a grin, leaving his votaries to disaster. Hence it is not always well to depend too much upon the devil. It is a fact worthy of remark that in the legends of his many compacts with mankind it is always assumed that he is honest in his dealings and a model of business-like straightforwardness, while it is the insignificant mortal--mere wax in such hands--who ultimately cheats and circumvents him. Surely this is all wrong. We would not wish the devil to be inconsistent, and it is in the fitness of things that his ardent worshippers should find the ground slippery under foot, and the power in which they trusted--nowhere. Vainly she revolved the chances of ever returning to Lorge, when suddenly arrived the abbé's first letter, which was quite sticky and mawkish with honey. What was he driving at? He would not write thus without an object. She smiled, locked away the missive, and waited.