Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/253

 where else to seek her. Monsieur was his friend. Perhaps it would be well if he should warn him? Mad or not, the girl was a dangerous creature. It was an ill day when she had come back to them with her foreign ways and ideas of being a lady,—a lady, and too good to live and eat with her own flesh and blood!

As he ceased speaking, the man gave an ugly laugh and smote his red cap upon his knee with an angry gesture.

As he listened to the man's story, Philip hastily dressed himself, and by the time the dago had finished, he was ready. They went out together, a strangely contrasted pair, the tall and graceful figure of Rondelet, aristocratic in outline, exquisite in dress, towering above the short, heavily-built plebeian, strong and stupid as an ox. By that subtler sense of intuition he knew where to seek Robert; and while he was making all speed to reach and warn him, a suggestion floated through his mind whose baseness was only realized in the moment when it was indignantly dismissed,—"Why should he interfere? Why should he step out of his way to warn his rival of a possible danger, of a fate which he perhaps deserved?"

He shuddered as he understood the full meaning of that whispered temptation, and was thankful to see by the unabated pace of his companion