“Ah, you are there!” he cried, with something between a snarl and a laugh, and addressing somebody within the shelter of the porch. “Par la mort Dieu, I had hardly looked to find you!”
From the recess of the doorway I heard a gasp of amazement and a cry of “Marsac! You here?”
So this was the gentleman I was to see! A stable boy had taken his reins, and he leapt nimbly to the ground. Into my range of vision hobbled now the enfeebled gentleman whom earlier I had noticed.
“My dear Stanislas!” he cried, “I cannot tell you how rejoiced I am to see you!” and he approached Marsac with arms that were opened as if to embrace him.
The newcomer surveyed him a moment in wonder, with eyes grown dull. Then abruptly raising his hand, he struck the fellow on the breast, and thrust him back so violently that but for the stable-boy's intervention he had of a certainty fallen. With a look of startled amazement on his haggard face, the invalid regarded his assailant.
As for Marsac, he stepped close up to him.
“What is this?” he cried harshly. “What is this make-believe feebleness? That you are pale, poltroon, I do not wonder! But why these tottering limbs? Why this assumption of weakness? Do you look to trick me by these signs?”
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” exclaimed the other, a note of responsive anger sounding in his voice. “Have you gone mad, Stanislas?”
“Abandon this pretence,” was the contemptuous answer. “Two days ago at Lavedan, my friend, they informed me how complete was your recovery; from what they told us, it was easy to guess why you tarried there and left us without news of you. That was my reason, as you may have surmised, for writing to you. My sister has mourned you for dead--was mourning you for dead whilst you sat at the feet of your Roxalanne and made love to her among the roses of Lavedan.”
“Lavedan?” echoed the other slowly. Then, raising his voice, “what the devil are you saying?” he blazed. “What do I know of Lavedan?”
In a flash it had come to me who that enfeebled gentleman was. Rodenard, the blunderer, had been at fault when he had said that Lesperon had expired. Clearly he could have no more than swooned; for here, in the flesh, was Lesperon himself, the man I had left for dead in that barn by Mirepoix.