"Take him my message. Tell him all this. But you cannot, wanting my voice and my eyes, in which he used to read every thought. Yet you will remember how I looked and what I said. And you will tell Nicolas that I love him as he taught me to, that without him all the world has grown dark, and that I shall love him until I die!" The trooper caught her to him, for he felt that she was falling. Rachel controlled herself by a strong effort, and she pushed him gently toward the door. Vétérin turned to give one last look at that supplicating figure, with the dishevelled hair in sweet confusion about the tear-stained face; then he went out. He muttered, in a voice that he might not have known as his own: _Peste!_ It seems to me that this Simon Mansart is very much in the way!" III. On the evening of that day Simon Mansart was sitting alone before a handful of fire when he heard his big dogs barking with anger. As the disturbance continued he went to the door, and he thought he perceived without, in the black night, a blacker shadow beyond the gate. "Will you call off your lambs?" shouted a voice. "Who are you? And what do you want?" cried Mansart, always terribly suspicious of strangers, and especially those who arrived after dusk. "You do not know me, but I have come on your business." "Then you will come again when it is daylight, my friend," and he began to close the door. "Very well," was the immediate reply. "I am determined to see you now, and if your dogs attempt to stop me they must take the consequences." Simon laughed incredulously; but when he heard the iron gate scream on its rusty hinges, and when he heard the growls of the dogs, he exclaimed, vehemently, "Take care! You will be torn to pieces!" "I shall at least kill one of your dogs first," was the determined reply. "Stop! I will call them off," said Mansart, who would never have yielded had he the smallest doubt of the other's resolution. He whistled his great curs off; but he was sorry that he had done so when he perceived his visitor, who was a French trooper, swaggering and fierce, and who could have crushed Mansart in his strong arms. "May I come in?" said he, and he advanced so persistently that the other was compelled to retreat before him. He closed the door and stood before it--tall, erect, commanding. "Your errand, monsieur?" demanded Simon, trembling with rage, yet afraid. "How dark it is in here! And what a little fire for so cold a night!" "We do not need light to talk by, and I am warm enough." "And poor enough. Is it not so? It is about that that I have come." Mansart grew more polite. He had signed away a fortune to a girl who loathed him. When peace should come the courts would make good her claim. So that any overture, any compromise, was welcome. [Illustration: "MY NAME IS PHILLIPE VÉTÉRIN," SAID THE CUIRASSIER.]