For that, you may rest
assured, they will punish me.
"You will see, therefore, that my own safety rests on your passing
quietly out of France and leaving the belief behind you that you are
dead - a belief that will quickly spread once I shall have cast off
your identity. You apprehend me?"
"Vaguely, monsieur; and perhaps you are right. What do you say,
Stanislas?"
"Say?" cried the fiery Marsac. "I am weighed down with shame, my
poor Rene, for having so misjudged you."
More he would have said in the same strain, but Lesperon cut him
short and bade him attend to the issue now before him. They
discussed it at some length, but always under the cloud in which
my mysteriousness enveloped it, and, in the end, encouraged by my
renewed assurances that I could best save myself if Lesperon were
not taken with me, the Gascon consented to my proposals.
Marsac was on his way to Spain. His sister, he told us, awaited
him at Carcassonne. Lesperon should set out with him at once, and
in forty-eight hours they would be beyond the reach of the King's
anger.
"I have a favour to ask of you, Monsieur de Marsac," said I, rising;
for our business was at an end. "It is that if you should have an
opportunity of communicating with Mademoiselle de Lavedan, you will
let her know that I am not - not the Lesperon that is betrothed to
your sister."
"I will inform her of it, monsieur," he answered readily; and then,
of a sudden, a look of understanding and of infinite pity came into
his eyes.
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