“You seem to me as young as I was then. May God preserve you from man’s treachery. He did not preserve me,” said James.
“I do not know how Montdelys knew that she was defenceless,” continued he, “but I think there must have been some spy of his watching us. As soon as I had left Holland he sent to her to say he was ill, probably dying, and that he had forgiven all. He longed for the sight of the boy, and he asked her to bring him that he might see his grandchild; she was to make her home with him while I was absent, and he would send word to me to join them on my return. Diane sent me the good news and went, fearing nothing, to find herself a prisoner.
“And all this time he had been working—he and the Spaniard—to get the Pope to annul our marriage, and they had succeeded. What they said to her, what they did, I know not, and never shall know, but they could not shake Diane. I was on my way back to Holland when she managed to escape with the boy. Storms in the North Sea delayed me, but I was not disturbed, knowing her to be safe. I did not know when I landed at last that she was dead. . . . She swam the canal, Flemington, with the child tied on her shoulders, and the brother-officer of mine—a man in my own company, whom she had contrived to communicate with—was waiting for her with a carriage. My regiment had moved to Bergen-op-Zoom, and he meant to take her there. He had arranged it with the wife of my colonel, who was to give her shelter till I arrived, and could protect her myself. They had gone more than half-way to Bergen when they were overtaken, early in the morning. She was shot, Flemington. The bullet was meant for Carmichael, the man who was with her, but it struck Diane. . . . They laid her on the grass at the roadside and she died, holding Carmichael’s hand, and sending—sending——”
He stopped.
“And the child?” said Archie at last.
“Carmichael brought him to Bergen, with his mother. He did not live. The bullet had grazed his poor little body as he lay in her arms, and the exposure did the rest. They are buried at Bergen.”
Again Archie was speechless.
“I killed the Spaniard,” said James. “I could not reach Montdelys; he was too old to be able to settle his differences in the world of men.”
Archie did not know what to do. He longed with a bitter longing to show his companion something of what he felt, to give him some sign of the passion of sympathy which had shaken him as he listened; but his tongue was tied fast by the blighting knowledge of his true position, and to approach, by so much as a step, seemed only to blacken his soul and to load it yet more heavily with a treachery as vile as that which had undone James.