He did not approach her, for in truth he looked a dusty object; but he dragged his ugly cap off his head, then slowly, and keeping his eyes fixed upon her, he put one knee to the ground. "You did not doubt, m'dear, that I would come?" he asked quaintly. She shook her head. The last days were like a nightmare now; and in truth she ought never to have been afraid. "Will you ever forgive me?" he continued. "Forgive? What?" she murmured. "These last few days. I could not come before. You were safe for the time being. . . . That fiend was waiting for me. . . ." She gave a shudder and closed her eyes. "Where is he?" He laughed his gay, irresponsible laugh, and with a slender hand, still covered with coal-dust, he pointed to the helpless figure of Chauvelin. "Look at him!" he said. "Doth he not look a picture?" Marguerite ventured to look. Even at sight of her enemy bound tightly with ropes to a chair, his own tricolour scarf wound loosely round his mouth, she could not altogether suppress a cry of horror. "What is to become of him?" He shrugged his broad shoulders. "I wonder!" he said lightly. Then he rose to his feet, and went on with quaint bashfulness: "I wonder," he said, "how I dare stand thus before your ladyship!" And in a moment she was in his arms, laughing, crying, covered herself now with coal-dust and with grime. "My beloved!" she exclaimed with a shudder of horror. "What you must have gone through!" He only laughed like a schoolboy who has come through some impish adventure without much harm. "Very little, I swear!" he asserted gaily. "But for thoughts of you, I have never enjoyed anything so much as this last phase of a glorious adventure. After our clever friend here ordered the real Rateau to be branded, so that he might know him again wherever he saw him, I had to bribe the veterinary who had done the deed, to do the same thing for me. It was not difficult. For a thousand livres the man would have branded his own mother on the nose; and I appeared before him as a man of science, eager for an experiment He asked no questions. And, since then, I whenever Chauvelin gazed contentedly on my arm, I could have screamed for joy! "For the love of Heaven, my lady!" he added quickly, for he felt her soft, warm lips against his branded flesh; "don't shame me over such a trifle! I shall always love that scar, for the exciting time it recalls and because it happens to be the initial of your dear name." He stooped down to the ground and kissed the hem of her gown. After which he had to tell her as quickly and as briefly as he could, all that had happened in the past few days. "It was only by risking the fair Theresia's life," he said, "that I could save your own. No other spur would have goaded Tallien into open revolt." He turned and looked down for a moment on his enemy, who lay pinioned and helpless, with hatred and baffled revenge writ plainly on the contorted face and pale, rolling eyes.