From his concealment he had seen me leave the chateau with the Marquis, and as I suddenly loomed up before him now, he took me for the man whose clothes I wore, and naturally enough assumed that ill had befallen Gaston de Luynes.

Of a certainty I had been pistolled by him had I not spoken in time.

I lingered but to give him certain necessary orders; then, whilst he went off to join Abdon and see to their fulfilment, I made my way stealthily, with eyes keeping watch around me, across the terrace, and through the window into the room that St.Auban had left to follow me to his death.
The tapers still burned, and in all respects the chamber was as it had been; the back and breast pieces still lay upon the floor, and on the table the littered documents.

The door I ascertained had been locked on the inside, a precaution which St.Auban had no doubt taken so that none might spy upon the work that busied him.
I closed and made fast the window, then I bethought me that, being in ignorance of the whereabouts of St.Auban's bed-chamber, I must perforce spend the night as best I could within that very room.
And so I sat me down and pondered deeply o'er the work that was to come, the part I was about to play, and the details of its playing.

In this manner did I while away perchance an hour; through the next one I must have slept, for I awakened with a start to find three tapers spent and the last one spluttering, and in the sky the streaks that heralded the summer dawn.
Again I fell to thinking; again I slept, and woke again to find the night gone and the sunlight on my face.