“St. Croix!” I exclaimed fiercely.  “He would not be so base!” And yet was not even this better than the blind vengeance I had myself attributed to him?

“Perhaps not,” Croisette answered, while he gazed onwards through the twilight.  We were at the time the foremost of the party save the Vidame; and there was nothing to interrupt our view of his gigantic figure as he moved on alone before us with bowed shoulders.  “Perhaps not,” Croisette repeated thoughtfully.  “Sometimes I think we do not understand him; and that after all there may be worse people in the world than Bezers.”

I looked hard at the lad, for that was not what I had meant.  “Worse?” I said.  “I do not think so.  Hardly!”

“Yes, worse,” he replied, shaking his head.  “Do you remember lying under the curtain in the box-bed at Mirepoix’s?”

“Of course I do!  Do you think I shall ever forget it?”

“And Madame d’O coming in?”

“With the Coadjutor?” I said with a shudder.  “Yes.”

“No, the second time,” he answered, “when she came back alone.  It was pretty dark, you remember, and Madame de Pavannes was at the window, and her sister did not see her?”

“Well, well, I remember,” I said impatiently.  I knew from the tone of his voice that he had something to tell me about Madame d’O, and I was not anxious to hear it.  I shrank, as a wounded man shrinks from the cautery, from hearing anything about that woman; herself so beautiful, yet moving in an atmosphere of suspicion and horror.  Was it shame, or fear, or some chivalrous feeling having its origin in that moment when I had fancied myself her knight?  I am not sure, for I had not made up my mind even now whether I ought to pity or detest her; whether she had made a tool of me, or I had been false to her.

“She came up to the bed, you remember, Anne?” Croisette went on.  “You were next to her.  She saw you indistinctly, and took you for her sister.  And then I sprang from the bed.”

“I know you did!” I exclaimed sharply.  All this time I had forgotten that grievance.  “You nearly frightened her out of her wits, St. Croix.  I cannot think what possessed you—­why you did it?”

“To save your life, Anne” he answered solemnly, “and her from a crime! an unutterable, an unnatural crime.  She had come back to I can hardly tell it you—­to murder her sister.  You start.  You do not believe me.  It sounds too horrible.  But I could see better than you could.  She was exactly between you and the light.  I saw the knife raised.  I saw her wicked face!  If I had not startled her as I did, she would have stabbed you.  She dropped the knife on the floor, and I picked it up and have it.  See!”

I looked furtively, and turned away again, shivering.  “Why,” I muttered, “why did she do it?”

“She had failed you know to get her sister back to Pavannes’ house, where she would have fallen an easy victim.  Bezers, who knew Madame d’O, prevented that.  Then that fiend slipped back with her knife; thinking that in the common butchery the crime would be overlooked, and never investigated, and that Mirepoix would be silent!”