was paid.

“I thank you. Perhaps now you will give me your hand?”

“With the greatest pleasure.”

The Chevalier had for the moment stormed his heart with the same superb grace that he had robbed him of his sword.

“Adieu!”

And then in the sorest dudgeon André strode out in search of his sword. To his surprise the wall of the court where they had fought backed on to the churchyard, and a few minutes’ groping revealed his sword by the strangest accident lying in the damp, matted grass that sprawled over the tombstone of the little Marquise Marie. Yes, at that bitter moment he could have shed tears of shame as he recalled the defeat and the humiliation inflicted on him by that beardless boy, on him, a Capitaine-Lieutenant of the Chevau-légers de la Garde, on him who had never been vanquished yet. And he had sworn to win Denise! Why was he not lying under the sod, forgotten and dead to the pain of the world, like little Marie?

A figure was creeping past him in the dark--a woman!

“Who is that?” he cried sharply, plucking at her hood.

“Monseigneur, it is me--me, Monseigneur.”

“Yvonne!” He let the hood go as if he had been stabbed.

“But yes, Monseigneur, Yvonne of the Spotted Cow.” She kissed his hand, humbly.

“Yvonne,” he gasped. “What do you here?”

“I was born in this village,” she answered, “my mother, she lives here. She is old, my mother.”

“You--born here?”

“Surely, Monseigneur. It is the truth.” André shivered. Half an hour ago how near his mother, who was old too, had been to praying for the soul of her only son. And she had been spared that pain by the courtesy of a beardless chevalier.

 Prev. P 33/227 next