muffled figure, advanced from the dark depths of the salon. As the light beat on his white, lean face the pseudo-footman started. The next moment he too stepped forward into the light, and swept his broad-brimmed hat from his brow. As he did so Andre-Louis observed that his hand was fine and white and that a jewel flashed from one of the fingers. Then he caught his breath, and stiffened in every line as he recognized the face revealed to him.
“Monsieur,” that stern, proud man was saying, “I cannot take advantage of your ignorance. If these ladies can persuade you to save me, at least it is due to you that you shall know whom you are saving.”
He stood there by the table very erect and dignified, ready to perish as he had lived—if perish he must—without fear and without deception.
Andre-Louis came slowly forward until he reached the table on the other side, and then at last the muscles of his set face relaxed, and he laughed.
“You laugh?” said M. de La Tour d’Azyr, frowning, offended.
“It is so damnably amusing,” said Andre-Louis.
“You’ve an odd sense of humour, M. Moreau.”
“Oh, admitted. The unexpected always moves me so. I have found you many things in the course of our acquaintance. Tonight you are the one thing I never expected to find you: an honest man.”
M. de La Tour d’Azyr quivered. But he attempted no reply.
“Because of that, monsieur, I am disposed to be clement. It is probably a foolishness. But you have surprised me into it. I give you three minutes, monsieur, in which to leave this house, and to take your own measures for your safety. What afterwards happens to you shall be no concern of mine.”
“Ah, no, Andre! Listen…” Madame began in anguish.
“Pardon, madame. It is the utmost that I will do, and already I am violating what I conceive to be my duty. If M. de La Tour d’Azyr remains he not only ruins himself, but he imperils you. For unless he departs at once, he goes with me to the headquarters of the section, and the section will have his head on a pike inside the hour. He is a notorious counter-revolutionary, a knight of the dagger, one of those whom an exasperated populace is determined to exterminate. Now, monsieur, you know what awaits you. Resolve yourself and at once, for these ladies’ sake.”
“But you don’t know, Andre-Louis!” Mme. de Plougastel’s condition was one of anguish indescribable. She came to him and clutched his arm. “For the love of Heaven, Andre-Louis, be merciful with him! You must!”
“But that is what I am being, madame—merciful; more merciful than he deserves. And he knows it. Fate has meddled most oddly in our concerns to bring us together tonight. Almost it is as if Fate were forcing retribution at last upon him. Yet, for your sakes, I take no advantage of it, provided that he does at once as I have desired him.”
And now from beyond the table the Marquis spoke icily, and as he spoke his right hand stirred under the ample folds of his greatcoat.
“I am glad, M. Moreau, that you take that tone with me. You relieve me of the last scruple. You spoke of Fate just now, and I must agree with you that Fate has meddled oddly, though perhaps not to the end that you discern. For years now you have chosen to stand in my path and thwart me at every turn, holding over me a perpetual menace. Persistently you have sought my life in various ways, first indirectly and at last directly. Your intervention in my affairs has ruined my highest hopes—more effectively, perhaps, than you suppose. Throughout you have been my evil genius. And you are even one of the agents of this climax of despair that has been reached by me tonight.”
“Wait! Listen!” Madame was panting. She flung away from Andre-Louis, as if moved by some premonition of what was coming. “Gervais! This is horrible!”
“Horrible, perhaps, but inevitable. Himself he has invited it. I am a man in despair, the fugitive of a lost cause. That man holds the keys of escape. And, besides, between him and me there is a reckoning to be paid.”
His hand came from beneath the coat at last, and it came armed with a pistol.
Mme. de Plougastel screamed, and flung herself upon him. On her knees now, she clung to his arm with all her strength and might.
Vainly he sought to shake himself free of that desperate clutch.
“Therese!” he cried. “Are you mad? Will you destroy me and yourself? This creature has the safe-conducts that mean our salvation. Himself, he is nothing.”
From the background Aline, a breathless, horror-stricken spectator of that scene, spoke sharply, her quick mind pointing out the line of checkmate.
“Burn the safe-conducts, Andre-Louis. Burn them at once—in the candles there.”
But Andre-Louis had taken advantage of that moment of M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s impotence to draw a pistol in his turn. “I think it will be better to burn his brains instead,” he said. “Stand away from him, madame.”
Far from obeying that imperious command, Mme. de Plougastel rose to her feet to cover the Marquis with her body. But she still clung to his arm, clung to it with unsuspected strength that continued to prevent him from attempting to use the pistol.
“Andre! For God’s sake, Andre!” she panted hoarsely over her shoulder.
“Stand away, madame,” he commanded her again, more sternly, “and let this murderer take his due. He is jeopardizing all our lives, and his own has been forfeit these years. Stand away!” He sprang forward with intent now to fire at his enemy over her shoulder, and Aline moved too late to hinder him.
“Andre! Andre!”
Panting, gasping, haggard of face, on the verge almost of hysteria, the distracted Countess flung at last an effective, a terrible barrier between the hatred of those men, each intent upon taking the other’s life.
“He is your father, Andre! Gervais, he is your son—our son! The letter there…on the table… O my God!” And she slipped nervelessly to the ground, and crouched there sobbing at the feet of M. de La Tour d’Azyr.
CHAPTER XV
SAFE-CONDUCT
Across the body of that convulsively sobbing woman, the mother of one and the mistress of the other, the eyes of those mortal enemies met, invested with a startled, appalled interest that admitted of no words.
Beyond the table, as if turned to stone by this culminating horror of revelation, stood Aline.
M. de La Tour d’Azyr was the first to stir. Into his bewildered mind came the memory of something that Mme. de Plougastel had said of a letter that was on the table. He came forward, unhindered. The announcement made, Mme. de Plougastel no longer feared the sequel, and so she let him go. He walked unsteadily past this new-found son of his, and took up the sheet that lay beside the candlebranch. A long moment he stood reading it, none heeding him. Aline’s eyes were all on Andre-Louis, full of wonder and commiseration, whilst Andre-Louis was staring down, in stupefied fascination, at his mother.
M. de La Tour d’Azyr read the letter slowly through. Then very quietly he replaced it. His next concern, being the product of an artificial age sternly schooled in the suppression of emotion, was to compose himself. Then he stepped back to Mme. de Plougastel’s side and stooped to raise her.
