"There are in it many features that may have escaped you, and which I shall discuss with you if you will honour me by stepping into the garden below." "Why will not the terrace serve ?" "Because I may have that to say which I would not have overheard." She knit her brows and stared at me as though she would penetrate the black cloth that hid my face.

At last she shrugged her shoulders, and letting her arms fall to her side in a gesture of helplessness and resignation-- "Soit; I will go with you," was all she said.
Side by side we went down the steps as a pair of lovers might have gone, save that her face was white and drawn, and that her eyes looked straight before her, and never once, until we reached the gravel path below, at her companion.

Side by side we walked along one of the rose-bordered alleys, until at length I stopped.
"Mademoiselle," I said, speaking in the natural tones of that good-for-naught Gaston de Luynes, "I have already decided, and you have my permission to accompany your father." At the sound of my voice she started, and with her left hand clutching at the region of her heart, she stood, her head thrust forward, and on her face the look of one who is confronted with some awful doubt.

That look was brief, however, and swift to replace it was one of hideous revelation.
"In God's name, who are you ?" she cried in accents that bespoke internal agony.
"Already you have guessed it, Mademoiselle," I answered, and I would have added that which should have brought comfort to her distraught mind, when-- "You!" she gasped in a voice of profound horror.

"You! You, the Judas who has sold my father to the Cardinal for a paltry share in our estates.