She had risen and stood before him with eyes uplifted and unseeing.  For a moment only she stood thus, before, the strain of the time proving too great for her to endure longer, she turned suddenly, and but for his supporting arm would have fallen.  For a little while her dear, dark head lay against his breast, a moment never to be forgotten by him, though with stoical delicacy he refrained from thoughts which might have offended her could she have known them.  He had grown very white before she recovered herself, but the great light still shone in his eyes as he placed a hand tenderly on her shoulder.

“Go home, little girl,” he said.  “Go home and be at peace.  I give my word to help him.  I give my word that all, so far as I can make it, will be well with him.”

“Ah,” she cried, “you are so good, so good!”

He made no answer whatever, standing gray-faced by the window, looking into the storm without as she drew her cloak about her.

“Good-bye,” she said.

“I’ll take you to the carriage,” he answered, quietly.  “The storm is still violent, I see.”

Coming back to the office, he locked the door, drew the curtains, and sat beside the dying fire alone.  In the outer room he could hear the click of poker dice, could even distinguish the voices of the players, but they seemed far off.  Life itself seemed slipping from him.  Suddenly he threw himself face downward on the rug in front of the fire and lay shivering, catching his breath every little while in dry sobs, impossible for any one to endure for long.  Every little while he clutched the edge of the rug in his sinewy hand, not knowing in his agony what he did.  The dreams and hopes of six years had been taken from him, and a great imagined future built on those dreams as well.  The glory of his life had departed, and in his passionate misery there seemed nothing ahead for him but gray skies and barren land and bitter waters.

All night and far into the morning he lay.  About five, the storm outside having died away, the gray light began showing faintly at the window edges, and with the coming of the dawn the soul of the man gripped him and demanded an accounting.  “Was this the way he helped?” he asked himself, accusingly.

By chairs and desk, for his strength was spent, he reached a small cabinet, and, finding a certain powder, took one, and, after a little while, another.  Then he felt his pulse, timing it by the watch as he did so.  Satisfied, he crossed the room to a safe, and with uncertain hands placed package after package of papers on the desk in careful order.  Last, from an inner compartment, he took one labelled “Ravenel,” and stood looking at it with speculative eyes.

The case was so complete.  Quantrelle and his brother, a cure of Dieppe, of known integrity, had sworn themselves as witnesses, through an open window, of Madame de Nemours’ marriage.  But what of it?  Katrine could never marry a man with a disputed name!  Still looking at the bundle, he struck a match.  It flared up, sputtered, and went out, as though giving him time for second thought.  Resolutely he lighted another, set the flame to the papers for a second time, and in an instant whatever trouble they contained for Frank Ravenel was nothing but smoke in the chimney.