THE CHEVALIER DE NOYAN It seems strange any man should deliberately venture life for one he had never seen; one whom, moreover, he hated with an intensity of passion seldom experienced between man and man.

I have not been of revengeful disposition, nor often indulged in grave personal dislike, yet it would be wrong in this simple narrative for me to attempt concealment of my own impulses.

So it is impossible to deny that, from the first moment when she called Charles de Noyan husband, I felt toward him a degree of animosity deeper than I had before supposed it possible for me to entertain relative to any human being.

It was bitter memory of the past, a belief that I had once won the heart of this fair girl, only to be balked of reward by spectral hands of religion, which swayed me thus strongly.

To my thought this stranger was one who had purchased, from priests at the altar, what was mine by divine decree; what would remain mine forever from the mandate of love unchangeable, eternally sealed by higher power than any priestly ritual.
Yet I had already passed through a day and night of intense excitement, of grave peril, endeavoring to preserve the life of this man whom I would more gladly see die than any one I ever knew.