this boy not died very long ago.

It is no more cheerful than any other mortuary employment, this
disinterment of the person you have been, and are not any longer; and
so did Perion find his cataloguing of irrevocable old follies and
evasions.

Then Perion arose and looked for pen and ink. It was the first letter
he ever wrote to Melicent, and, as you will presently learn, she never
saw it.

In such terms Perion wrote:

"Madame--It may please you to remember that when Dame Melusine and I
were interrogated, I freely confessed to the murder of King Helmas and
the theft of my dead master's jewels. In that I lied. For it was my
manifest duty to save the woman whom, as I thought, I loved, and it was
apparent that the guilty person was either she or I.

"She is now at Brunbelois, where, as I have heard, the splendour of her
estate is tolerably notorious. I have not ever heard she gave a thought
to me, her cat's-paw. Madame, when I think of you and then of that
sleek, smiling woman, I am appalled by my own folly. I am aghast by my
long blindness as I write the words which no one will believe. To what
avail do I deny a crime which every circumstance imputed to me and my
own confession has publicly acknowledged?

"But you, I think, will believe me. Look you, madame, I have nothing to
gain of you. I shall not ever see you any more. I go into a perilous
and an eternal banishment; and in the immediate neighbourhood of death