“This will take you into the gallery,” he said. “You will find little Crequi in waiting at the other end, and he will tell you more than I can. I never venture there, so now say _au revoir_!” With a word or so of thanks for his kindness, I put my hand to the door, and, passing through it, found myself in the gallery. It stretched along a wing of the palace overlooking a terrace laid out as a garden, which hung over the cloisters of the courtyard beneath. I had scarce taken ten steps when a little burst of laughter came up to me from the terrace, and with it my own name pronounced in a woman’s voice. Glancing out through the window, I saw, seated on a rustic bench immediately beneath me, two ladies, wrapped in long cloaks, for the day was cold. The one was La Limeuil, the other the woman over whom my life was wrecked. I stood for a moment watching them--it was only on one of them that my eyes were fixed, and as I looked on those clear-cut, delicate features, and the limpid blue eyes, and the rippling flaxen curls that escaped from her silken hood, all the love I thought was gone came back, and I stood there, trembling, and all but unable to move. That face could never have played the traitor! No! I had misjudged it. I was wrong, a hundred times wrong. It was not for me to bring sorrow to those eyes, so honest and true--I who had escaped but by a hand’s breadth from shadowing them with eternal sorrow. In that moment I forgot my vengeance, forgot all. I was only conscious of the fact that I was near her. I rested my hand on the marble balustrade and looked. I would draw back. I would hold fast by the vows I had sworn to myself on that night when I spurred from the gates of Paris, leaving, as I thought, my sin behind me; and even as my mind worked so, the other woman, Isabel de Limeuil, spoke, and speech and answer struck me like a blow on the face. “As I was saying, I saw him, your old friend, de Vibrac. Is it true that he weds Favras’ daughter, that little Yvonne de Mailly?” Marie de Marcilly opened and shut the gold stopper of her vinaigrette as she answered: “I neither know nor care. Monsieur de Vibrac’s affairs do not interest me in the least.” But the other was not to be denied, and with the feline cruelty of her sex she thrust in a pin. “He adored you once--did he not?” Marie laughed. “Whoever can remember a year back? The trifling of an hour passes with the hour, and one forgets it with one’s old gloves or a worn-out mask.” I caught my breath. It was true then! Achon’s words--the thoughts that had come to me last night--were they not true--proved to the very hilt? But I would have measure for measure, and, waiting to hear no more, I drew back, the hot blood burning within me.