"Are you la Montmorency," he asked, "the fiancée of the Guardsman?"
"This is a strange question," she exclaimed. "How does it concern you, sir?"
"Deeply, deeply. These are matters of life and death."
"What do you mean?"
"Do not fear, your lover is safe. I could have killed him, but did not."
She became roused and agitated, and the thought flashed upon her that the man might be a maniac.
"You would not," she said, trying to reason with him, "have injured anyone so good and inoffensive as Monsieur de Répentigny?"
"Répentigny!" he cried. "It is because he bore that name that I tracked him to Troyes. It was a Répentigny who slew my father, and blessed was the light of the street lamp which showed me your lover was none of that brood."
"You would have killed him, you say?"
"I was to do so, but it was by mistake."