He tried to think if he had ever wronged her; wondered if perhaps she loved someone else, and wished _him_ out of her way.
But, then, he had been so humble, so unassuming in his love.

He had arrogated nothing unto himself, asked for nothing, demanded nothing in virtue of his protecting powers over her.
He was torturing himself with this awful wonderment of why she had treated him thus.
Out of revenge for her brother's death--that was the only explanation he could find, the only palliation for her crime.
He knew nothing of her oath to her father, and, of course, had never heard of the sad history of this young, sensitive girl placed in one terrible moment between her dead brother and her demented father.

He only thought of common, sordid revenge for a sin he had been practically forced to commit.
And how he had loved her! Yes, _loved_--for that was in the past now.
She had ceased to be a saint or a madonna; she had fallen from her pedestal so low that he could not find the way to descend and grope after the fragments of his ideal.
At his own door he was met by Anne Mie in tears.
"She has gone," murmured the young girl.

"I feel as if I had murdered her." "Gone?
Who?
Where ?" queried Deroulede rapidly, an icy feeling of terror gripping him by the heart-strings.
"Juliette has gone," replied Anne Mie; "those awful brutes took her away." "When ?" "Directly after you left.

That man Merlin found some ashes and scraps of paper in her room ..." "Ashes ?" "Yes; and a torn letter-case." "Great God!" "She said that they were love letters, which she had been burning for fear you should see them." "She said so?
Anne Mie, Anne Mie, are you quite sure ?" It was all so horrible, and he did not quite understand it all; his brain, which was usually so keen and so active, refused him service at this terrible juncture.
"Yes; I am quite sure," continued Anne Mie, in the midst of her tears.
"And oh! that awful Merlin said some dastardly things.