I think I foresaw already what was coming.
"I am Louis de Pavannes," he replied with impatience.
I stared at him in silence: thinking--thinking--thinking.

And then I said slowly, "You have a cousin of the same name ?" "I have." "He fell prisoner to the Vicomte de Caylus at Moncontour ?" "He did," he answered curtly.

"But what of that, sir ?" Again I did not answer--at once.

The murder was out.

I remembered, in the dim fashion in which one remembers such things after the event, that I had heard Louis de Pavannes, when we first became acquainted with him, mention this cousin of the same name; the head of a younger branch.