Do not think of me,--nor of yourself,--but only of Jesus Christ,
who said, 'Whosoever would save his life shall lose it.'"
Mazurier took this message. What did he do with it? He tossed it to the
winds.
A week after, Le Roy was brought to trial,--and recanted; and so
recanting, was acquitted and set at liberty.
Mazurier supposed that he meant all kindly in the exertion he made to
save his friend. He would never have ceased from self-reproach, had he
conveyed the words of Jacqueline to Victor,--for the effect of those
words he could clearly foresee.
And so far from attempting to bring about an interview between the pair,
he would have striven to prevent it, had he seen a probability that it
would be allowed. He set little value on such words as Jacqueline spoke,
when her conscience and her love rose up against each other. The
words she had committed to him he could account for by no supposition
acceptable and reasonable to him. There was something about the girl he
did not understand; she was no fit guide for a man who had need of clear
judgment, when such a decision was to be made as the court demanded of
Le Roy.
Elsie Meril, between hope and fear, was dumb in these days; but her
presence and her tenderness, though not heroic in action nor wise in
utterance, had a value of which neither she nor Jacqueline was fully
aware.
When Jacqueline learned the issue of the trial, and that Victor had
falsified his faith, her first impulse was to fly, that she might never
see his face again.
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