"I have."

"He fell prisoner to the Vicomte de Caylus at Moncontour?"

"He did," he answered curtly. "But what of that, sir?"

Again I did not answer--at once. The murder was out. I
remembered, in the dim fashion in which one remembers such things
after the event, that I had heard Louis de Pavannes, when we
first became acquainted with him, mention this cousin of the same
name; the head of a younger branch. But our Louis living in
Provence and the other in Normandy, the distance between their
homes, and the troubles of the times had loosened a tie which
their common religion might have strengthened. They had scarcely
ever seen one another. As Louis had spoken of his namesake but
once during his long stay with us, and I had not then foreseen
the connection to be formed between our families, it was no
wonder that in the course of months the chance word had passed
out of my head, and I had clean forgotten the subject of it.
Here however, he was before my eyes, and seeing him; I saw too
what the discovery meant. It meant a most joyful thing! a most
wonderful thing which I longed to tell Croisette and Marie. It
meant that our Louis de Pavannes--my cheek burned for my want of
faith in him--was no villain after all, but such a noble
gentleman as we had always till this day thought him! It meant
that he was no court gallant bent on breaking a country heart for
sport, but Kit's own true lover! And--and it meant more--it
meant that he was yet in danger, and still ignorant of the vow
that unchained fiend Bezers had taken to have his life! In
pursuing his namesake we had been led astray, how sadly I only