"Will you ever forgive me?" he continued.

"Forgive? What?" she murmured.

"These last few days. I could not come before. You were safe for the time being. . . . That fiend was waiting for me. . . ."

She gave a shudder and closed her eyes.

"Where is he?"

He laughed his gay, irresponsible laugh, and with a slender hand, still covered with coal-dust, he pointed to the helpless figure of Chauvelin.

"Look at him!" he said. "Doth he not look a picture?"

Marguerite ventured to look. Even at sight of her enemy bound tightly with ropes to a chair, his own tricolour scarf wound loosely round his mouth, she could not altogether suppress a cry of horror.

"What is to become of him?"

He shrugged his broad shoulders.