CHAPTER V.
A PRIEST AND A WOMAN.
"He is my husband!" The statement was made in the purest innocence; yet never, as may well be imagined, did words fall with more stunning force.

Not one of us answered or, I believe, moved so much as a limb or an eyelid.

We only stared, wanting time to take in the astonishing meaning of the words, and then more time to think what they meant to us in particular.
Louis de Pavannes' wife! Louis de Pavannes married! If the statement were true--and we could not doubt, looking in her face, that at least she thought she was telling the truth--it meant that we had been fooled indeed! That we had had this journey for nothing, and run this risk for a villain.

It meant that the Louis de Pavannes who had won our boyish admiration was the meanest, the vilest of court-gallants.

That Mademoiselle de Caylus had been his sport and plaything.