CHAPTER VIII.
THE MARK OF CAIN.
When Jehan, in a fever of indignation, slipped stealthily out of the house in the Rue Touchet and sped up the dark, quiet street after Madame de Vidoche, he had no subtler purpose in his mind than to overtake her and warn her. The lady had spoken kindly to him on the night of the supper at Les Andelys. She was young, weak, oppressed; the plot against her seemed to the child to be fiendish in its artfulness. It needed no more to rouse every chivalrous instinct in his nature--and these in a boy should be many, or woe betide the man--and determine him to save her.
He thought that if he could overtake her and warn her all would be well; and at first his purpose went no farther than that. But as he ran, now looking over his shoulder in terror, and now peeri
