"I am not so sure of that," said M. Renard, thoughtfully; "but grant that
money may do so, and grant also that the Vicomte, being a needy man, has
become a very unscrupulous one,--is there anything in your motives for
discovering Louise Duval which might occasion you trouble and annoyance,
if it were divined by a needy and unscrupulous man; anything which might
give him a power of threat or exaction? Mind, I am not asking you to
tell me any secret you have reasons for concealing, but I suggest that it
might be prudent if you did not let M. Lebeau know your real name and
rank; if, in short, you could follow his example, and adopt a disguise.
But no; when I think of it, you would doubtless be so unpractised in the
art of disguise that he would detect you at once to be other than you
seem; and if suspecting you of spying into his secrets, and if those
secrets be really of a political nature, your very life might not be
safe."

"Thank you for your hint; the disguise is an excellent idea, and combines
amusement with precaution. That this Victor de Mauleon must be a very
unprincipled and dangerous man is, I think, abundantly clear. Granting
that he was innocent of all design of robbery in the affair of the
jewels, still, the offence which he did own--that of admitting himself at
night by a false key into the rooms of a wife, whom he sought to surprise
or terrify into dishonour--was a villanous action; and his present course
of life is sufficiently mysterious to warrant the most unfavourable
supposition. Besides, there is another motive for concealing my name
from him: you say that he once had a duel with a Vane, who was very
probably my father, and I have no wish to expose myself to the chance of
his turning up in London some day, and seeking to renew there the
acquaintance that I had courted at Paris. As for my skill in playing any
part I may assume, do not fear; I am no novice in that. In my younger
days I was thought clever in private theatricals, especially in the