"In fair fight, father!" protested the child.

"'Tis not fair for a man to kill a boy," retorted the old man, with
furious energy.

"Deroulede is thirty: my boy was scarce out of his teens: may the
vengeance of God fall upon the murderer!"

Juliette, awed, terrified, was gazing at her father with great,
wondering eyes. He seemed unlike himself. His face wore a curious
expression of ecstasy and of hatred, also of hope and exultation,
whenever he looked steadily at her.

That the final glimmer of a tottering reason was fast leaving the
poor, aching head she was too young to realise. Madness was a word
that had only a vague meaning for her. Though she did not understand
her father at the present moment, though she was half afraid of him,
she would have rejected with scorn and horror any suggestion that he
was mad.

Therefore when he took her hand and, drawing her nearer to the bed and
to himself, placed it upon her dead brother's breast, she recoiled at
the touch of the inanimate body, so unlike anything she had ever
touched before, but she obeyed her father without any question, and
listened to his words as to those of a sage.

"Juliette, you are now fourteen, and able to understand what I am
going to ask of you. If I were not chained to this miserable chair, if
I were not a hopeless, abject cripple, I would not depute anyone, not