‘Truly it is, lad,’ said Sir Marmaduke, ’and a very bad one, happily whole!  Is this the first time you have seen it?’

He did not answer, but covered his eyes with his hand, and presently burst out again, ’Then it is no dream?  Sir—­have I been to France?’

‘Yes, my son, you have,’ said Sir Marmaduke, gently, and with more tenderness than could have been looked for; ’but what passed there is much better viewed as a dream, and cast behind your back,’

Berenger had, while he spoke, taken up the same little mirror where he had once admired himself; and as he beheld the scar and plaster that disfigured his face, with a fresh start of recollection, muttered over, ’"Barbouiller ce chien de visage" —­ay, so he said.  I felt the pistol’s muzzle touch!  Narcisse!  Has God had mercy on me?  I prayed Him.  Ah! "le baiser d’Eustacie" —­so he said.  I was waiting in the dark.  Why did he come instead of her?  Oh! father, where is she?’

It was a sore task, but Sir Marmaduke went bravely and bluntly, though far from unkindly, to the point:  ’She remains with her friends in France.’

There the youth’s look of utter horror and misery shocked and startled them all, and he groaned rather than said, ’Left there!  Left to them!  What have I done to leave her there?’

‘Come, Berenger, this will not serve,’ said his mother, trying to rouse and cheer him.  ’You should rather be thankful that when you had been so foully ensnared by their wiles, good Osbert brought you off with your life away from those bloody doings.  Yes, you may thank Heaven and Osbert, for you are the only one of them living now.’

‘Of whom, mother?’

’Of all the poor Protestants that like you were deluded by the pack of murderers over there.  What,’—­fancying it would exhilarate him to hear of his own escape—­’you knew not that the bloody Guise and the Paris cut-throats rose and slew every Huguenot they could lay hands on?  Why, did not the false wench put off your foolish runaway project for the very purpose of getting you into the trap on the night of the massacre?’

He looked with a piteous, appealing glance from her to Cecily and Sir Marmaduke, as if in hopes that they would contradict.

‘Too true, my lad,’ said Sir Marmaduke.  ’It is Heaven’s good mercy that Osbert carried you out alive.  No other Protestant left the palace alive but the King of Navarre and his cousin, who turned renegades.’

‘And she is left there?’ he repeated.

‘Heed her not, my dear boy,’ began his mother; ’you are safe, and must forget her ill-faith and——­’

Berenger seemed scarcely to hear this speech—­he held out his hands as if stunned and dizzied, and only said, or rather indicated, ’Let me lie down.’

His stepfather almost carried him across the room, and laid him on his bed, where he turned away from the light and shut his eyes; but the knot of ribbon and the pin-pricked word was still in his hand, and his mother longed to take away the token of this false love, as she believed it.  The great clock struck the hour for her to go.  ‘Leave him quiet,’ said Cecily, gently; ’he can bear no more now.  I will send over in the evening to let you know how he fares.’