And then for a moment there was silence in the room, while the lad breathed hard and irregularly, and I stood rooted to the spot, looking so long and so strangely at the priest that Father Antoine laid his hand again on the door and glanced uneasily behind him.

Nor was he content until he had hit on, as he fancied, the cause of my strange regard.
'Ha!' he said, his thin lip curling in conceit at his astuteness, 'I understand you think to kill me to-night?
Let me tell you, this house is watched.

If you leave here to meet me with any companion--unless it be M.d'Agen, whom I can trust, I shall be warned, and be gone before you reach the rendezvous.

And gone, mind you,' he added, with a grim smile, 'to sign your death-warrant.' He went out with that, closing the door behind him; and we heard his step go softly down the staircase.

I gazed at Simon, and he at me, with all the astonishment and awe which it was natural we should feel in presence of so remarkable a coincidence.
For by a marvel the priest had named the same spot and the same time as the sender of the velvet knot! 'He will go,' Simon said, his face flushed and his voice trembling, 'and they will go.' 'And in the dark they will not know him,' I muttered.