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F all present Gabrielle was by far the most agitated. The Duke, perplexed, suspicious, and bitterly hostile to the man who had stepped between him and his passion, was chiefly concerned to find how best to turn the thing to his rival's hurt. De Proballe, angry at having been tricked, was for the moment too occupied in enjoying his personal importance in having thus unmasked the impostor, to think of much else.

But to Gabrielle the issue was all in all. If this were not Gerard her cousin, the man to whom she had been betrothed, how strangely forward and unmaidenly she must have appeared. She recalled with a sense of something akin to shame how she had almost pressed herself upon him in the first moment of his arrival; and at the recollection, her cheeks flamed so that she hid them beneath her hands and involuntarily drew away from his side.

It was but a little thing, that gesture of hers; but Gerard saw and understood it, and on the moment it stayed the words of avowal even as they were at his lips, and changed the whole course of his action. He had come to Morvaix to ascertain the truth as to the misgovernment and, if need arose, to depose and punish the powerful Governor; but his love for Gabrielle was now so much to him and filled so much of his purpose, that he set it first and before all else.