God was not to blame,—­only man, breaking God’s laws of equity.  She was a good brave woman, for despite her loneliness and tears, she worked hard;- -worked to send me to school, and to teach me all she herself knew—­ which was little enough, poor soul,—­but she studied in order to instruct me,—­and often when I slept the unconscious sleep of healthy childhood, she was up through half the night spelling out abstruse books, difficult enough for an educated woman to master, but for a peasant—­(she was nothing more)—­presenting almost superhuman obstacles.  I was very quick to learn, and her loving patience was not wasted upon me;—­but when I was about eleven years old I resolved that I could no longer burden her with the expenses of my life—­so without asking her consent, I hired myself out to a farmer, to clear weeds from his fields, and so began to earn my bread, which is the best and noblest form of knowledge existing in the world for all of us.  With the earning of my body’s keep came spiritual independence, and young as I was I began to read and consider for myself—­till when I was about fifteen chance brought me across the path of a man whose example inspired me and decided my fate, named Aubrey Leigh.”

Angela gave a slight exclamation of surprise, and Cyrillon turned his dark eyes upon her.

“Yes, mademoiselle!—­I am aware that he has been in Paris lately.  No doubt you know him.  Certainly he is born to be a leader of men, and if a noble life and unsullied character, together with eloquence, determination, and steadfastness of purpose can help him to fulfil his mission, he will assuredly succeed.  He is from America, though born of British parents, and the first thing I gathered from him was an overwhelming desire to study and to master the English language—­ not because it was English, but because it was the universal language spoken by America.  I felt from what he said then,—­and I feel still from what I have learnt and know now,—­that America has all the future in the hollow of her hand.  My intention, had I succeeded in my revengeful attempt this morning, was to escape to America immediately, and from there write under the nom de plume which I have already made known.  I can write as easily in English as in French,—­for my friend Aubrey Leigh was very kind and took a great liking to me, and stayed in Touraine for a year and a half, simply for the pleasure of instructing me and grafting his theories upon my young and aspiring mind.  And now we are as one in our hopes and endeavours, and the years make little disparity between us.  He was twenty-two when I was but fifteen,—­but now that I am twenty-six and he thirty-three we are far better matched associates.  From him I learnt much of the discontents,—­ethical and religious,—­of the world; from him I learnt how to speak in public.  He was then an actor, a sort of wandering ’Bohemian,’—­but he soon tired of the sordidness of the stage and aspired to higher platforms of work, and he had already begun