must have been guilty."

The brutally affronting words were sped beyond recall, and the lips
that had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest
commonplace, remained calm and faintly sneering.

A dead silence followed. Andre-Louis' wits were numbed. He stood
aghast, all thought suspended in him, what time M. de Vilmorin's
eyes continued fixed upon M. de La Tour d'Azyr's, as if searching
there for a meaning that eluded him. Quite suddenly he understood
the vile affront. The blood leapt to his face, fire blazed in his
gentle eyes. A convulsive quiver shook him. Then, with an
inarticulate cry, he leaned forward, and with his open hand struck
M. le Marquis full and hard upon his sneering face.

In a flash M. de Chabrillane was on his feet, between the two men.

Too late Andre-Louis had seen the trap. La Tour d'Azyr's words
were but as a move in a game of chess, calculated to exasperate his
opponent into some such counter-move as this - a counter-move that
left him entirely at the other's mercy.

M. le Marquis looked on, very white save where M. de Vilmorin's
finger-prints began slowly to colour his face; but he said nothing
more. Instead, it was M. de Chabrillane who now did the talking,
taking up his preconcerted part in this vile game.

"You realize, monsieur, what you have done," said he, coldly, to
Philippe. "And you realize, of course, what must inevitably follow."