"You had him in your power! You could have killed him, and you did not! Now he will kill me!" Madame Claude muttered something tearfully; something about Pavannes and the saints. I looked over Croisette's shoulder, and read the letter. It began abruptly without any term of address, and ran, "I have a mission in Paris, Mademoiselle, which admits of no delay. Your mission, as well as my own -- to see Pavannes. You have won his heart. It is yours, and I will bring it you, or his right hand in token that he has yielded up his claim to yours. And to this I pledge myself." The thing bore no signature. It was written in some red fluid -- blood, perhaps. On the outside was scrawled a direction to Mademoiselle de Caylus. And the packet was sealed with the Vidame's crest, a wolf's head.