"The testament was useless," answered Clovis, sulkily. "While we were yet in Paris, she saw through your plans and took measures to render them abortive. Such plans! We are undone--I, too--through your presuming and insensate folly." "She did!" exclaimed Pharamond, clasping his hands in admiration. "She solemnly declared that she knew her life to be in peril--that if ever she made another will, it would be under compulsion, and arranged for some private mark to show that this was so. Justice was put on the alert, and I came back in hottest haste to stop your action, but arrived, alas! too late." "She did that? the crafty, cunning baby-face!" cried Pharamond. "I ought to have known," growled Clovis, with rueful self-reproach, "that reserved baby-faced women are always cunning. But I trusted so much in you as to allow myself to be persuaded, and now I am undone--undone!" In spite of his discomfiture, the artistic instinct of the abbé could not but keenly appreciate the still long-suffering woman who had braved and circumvented him. And they had all been stupid enough to look upon her as a foe unworthy of their steel. That they should have done so was due to one of the many errors in judgment of the abominable Algaé. Well, well--she was a wondrous creature, as well as a beautiful. Gifted with second sight, had she been able to foresee what precise poison he would employ and provide herself with an antidote? Hardly. Therein lay a mystery. Meanwhile, conjectures fill no stomachs, and nature was beginning to assert herself aggressively. It was brutal of the baron to starve his cage-birds. To play with his brother, or to snarl and gird at him was mighty well as a pastime, but it grew more than annoying that, after the hints that had been thrown out, the baron should be so disgustingly inhospitable.