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Rh "Of course, I might have done so," he replied. He saw the slip then clearly enough, and tried to cover it with a laugh. "Perhaps I ought to have come."

"But you did not. Why? I do not mind that you did not, but why should you choose so strange a course?"

"What answer can I give, save it was a whim?"

"You would have seen me sooner had you come and would not have been one whit less welcome; and would in truth have saved me some hours of anxiety. Do you know that, yesterday, I sent high and low in search of you; and only this morning my poor Denys went riding out to Beaucamp on a veritable wild-goose chase to find you?"

Gerard smiled. "Did you at the time know who I was?" he asked.

"Should I have sent away from Morvaix to find you, had I known?"

"Then you, too, were not without interest in a stranger?"

"It is not a fair hit," she laughed. "I would not have had even a stranger think me an ingrate for such service."

"Then it was merely to thank me, you wished."

"Gerard!" and she let her eyes drop to the ground.

"I should like to think that before you heard my name to-day, you" He commenced in great earnestness, but checked himself again.

"Some day I will tell you," she replied in a low tone, after a pause; and then, in a tone as low, he asked—

"And what if I had been other than Gerard de Cobalt?"

"Thank God, it was not so," she cried, with a little shiver and a sigh.

"Why, Gabrielle?" He had his own strong reason for pressing the question.

For a time she kept her head bowed and remained