"Even so. That odious, cursed, infamous wager, was the something
which I hinted at so often as standing between you and me. The
confession that so often I was on the point of making - that so
often you urged me to make - concerned that wager. Would to God,
Roxalanne, that I had told you!" I cried, and it seemed to me that
the sincerity ringing in my voice drove some of the harshness from
her countenance, some of the coldness from her glance.

"Unfortunately," I pursued, "it always seemed to me either not yet
time, or already too late. Yet so soon as I regained my liberty,
my first thought was of that. While the wager existed I might not
ask you to become my wife, lest I should seem to be carrying out
the original intention which embarked me upon the business of
wooing you, and brought me here to Languedoc. And so my first step
was to seek out Chatellerault and deliver him my note of hand for
my Picardy possessions, the bulk - by far the greater bulk - of all
my fortune. My second step was to repair to you at the Hotel de
l'Epee.

"At last I could approach you with clean hands; I could confess what
I had done; and since it seemed to me that I had made the utmost
atonement, I was confident of success. Alas! I came too late. In
the porch of the auberge I met you as you came forth. From my
talkative intendant you had learnt already the story of that bargain
into which Bardelys had entered. You had learnt who I was, and you
thought that you had learnt why I wooed you. Accordingly you could
but despise me."

She had sunk into a chair. Her hands were folded in a listless
manner in her lap, and her eyes were lowered, her cheeks pale. But