So there was no danger to be feared, and his terrors of the night past—­he shivered a little to think of them—­had been, after all, useless terrors!  As for the prisoner out at La Lierre, nothing was to be feared from him so long as a careful watch was kept.  Later on he might have to be disposed of, since both bullet and poison had failed—­he scowled over that, remembering a bad quarter of an hour with O’Hara early this morning—­but that matter could wait.  Some way would present itself.  He thought of the wholly gratuitous lie he had told Hartley, a thing born of a moment’s malice, and he laughed again.  It struck him that it would be very humorous if Hartley should come to suspect his friend of turning aside from his great endeavors to enter upon an affair with a lady.  He dimly remembered that Ste. Marie’s name had, from time to time, been a good deal involved in romantic histories, and he said to himself that his lie had been very well chosen, indeed, and might be expected to cause Richard Hartley much anguish of spirit.

After that he lighted a very large cigarette, half as big as a cigar, and he lay back in his low, comfortable chair and began to think of the outcome of all this plotting and planning.  As is very apt to be the case when a great danger has been escaped, he was in a mood of extreme hopefulness and confidence.  Vaguely he felt as if the recent happenings had set him ahead a pace toward his goal, though of course they had done nothing of the kind.  The danger that would exist so long as Ste. Marie, who knew everything, was alive, seemed in some miraculous fashion to have dwindled to insignificance; in this rebound from fear and despair difficulties were swept away and the path was clear.  The man’s mind leaped to his goal, and a little shiver of prospective joy ran over him.  Once that goal gained he could defy the world.  Let eyes look askance, let tongues wag, he would be safe then—­safe for all the rest of his life, and rich, rich, rich!

For he was playing against a feeble old man’s life.  Day by day he watched the low flame sink lower as the flame of an exhausted lamp sinks and flickers.  It was slow, for the old man had still a little strength left, but the will to live—­which was the oil in the lamp—­was almost gone, and the waiting could not be long now.  One day, quite suddenly, the flame would sink down to almost nothing, as at last it does in the spent lamp.  It would flicker up and down rapidly for a few moments, and all at once there would be no flame there.  Old David would be dead, and a servant would be sent across the river in haste to the rue du Faubourg St. Honore.  Stewart lay back in his chair and tried to imagine that it was true, that it had already happened, as happen it must before long, and once more the little shiver, which was like a shiver of voluptuous delight, ran up and down his limbs, and his breath began to come fast and hard.

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