rapier, the fingers of his right twirling at his long fair mustachios,
at once confronted him and craved his business.

"I am the bearer of letters for Madame the Dowager Marquise de
Condillac," was the reply; whereupon, with an arrogant nod, Fortunio
bade the fellow go with him, and issued an order that his horse should
be cared for.

Arsenio was speaking in Garnache's ear. The man's nature was
inquisitive, and he was indulging idle conjectures as to what might
be the news this courier brought. Garnache's mind, actuated by very
different motives, was engaged upon the same task, so much so that not
a word heard he of what his supposed compatriot was whispering. Whence
came this courier? Why had not that fool Fortunio asked him, so that
Garnache might have overheard his answer? Was he from Paris and the
Queen, or was he, perchance, from Italy and Florimond? These were
questions to which it imported him to have the answers. He must know
what letters the fellow brought. The knowledge might guide him now;
might even cause him to alter the plans he had formed.

He stood in thought whilst, unheeded by him, Arsenio prattled at his
elbow. He bethought him of the old minstrel's gallery at the end of the
hall in which the Condillacs were dining and whither the courier would
be conducted. He knew the way to that gallery, for he had made a very
close study of the chateau against the time when he might find himself
in need of the knowledge.

With a hurried excuse to Arsenio he moved away, and, looking round to
see that he was unobserved, he was on the point of making his way to the
gallery when suddenly he checked himself. What went he there to do? To
play the spy? To become fellow to the lackey who listens at keyholes?
Ah, no! That was something no service could demand of him. He might owe
a duty to the Queen, but there was also a duty that he owed himself, and
this duty forbade him from going to such extremes. Thus spake his Pride,
and he mistook its voice for that of Honour. Betide what might, it was
not for Garnache to play the eavesdropper. Not that, Pardieu!

And so he turned away, his desires in conflict with that pride of his,
and gloomily he paced the courtyard, Arsenio marvelling what might have
come to him. And well was it for him that pride should have detained
him; well would it seem as if his luck were indeed in the ascendant and
had prompted his pride to save him from a deadly peril. For suddenly
some one called "Battista!"

He heard, but for the moment, absorbed as he was in his own musings,
he overlooked the fact that it was the name to which he answered at
Condillac.

Not until it was repeated more loudly, and imperatively, did he turn to
see Fortunio beckoning him. With a sudden dread anxiety, he stepped
to the captain's side. Was he discovered? But Fortunio's words set his
doubts to rest at once.

"You are to re-conduct Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye to her apartments at
once."

Garnache bowed and followed the captain up the steps and into the
chateau that he might carry out the order; and as he went he shrewdly
guessed that it was the arrival of that courier had occasioned the
sudden removal of mademoiselle.

When they were alone together--he and she--in her anteroom in the
Northern Tower, she turned to him before he had time to question her as
he was intending.

"A courier has arrived," said she.

"I know; I saw him in the courtyard. Whence is he? Did you learn it?"

"From Florimond." She was white with agitation.

"From the Marquis de Condillac?" he cried, and he knew not whether to
hope or fear. "From Italy?"

"No, monsieur. I do not think from Italy. From what was said I gathered
that Florimond is already on his way to Condillac. Oh, it made a fine
stir. It left them no more appetite for dinner, and they seem to have
thought it could have left me none for mine, for they ordered my instant
return to my apartments."

"Then you know nothing--save that the courier is from the Marquis?"

"Nothing; nor am I likely to," she answered, and her arms dropped limply
to her sides, her eyes looked entreatingly up into his gloomy face.

But Garnache could do no more than rap out an oath. Then he stood still
a moment, his eyes on the window, his chin in his hand, brooding.
His pride and his desire to know more of that courier's message were
fighting it out again in his mind, just as they fought it out in the
courtyard below. Suddenly his glance fell on her, standing there, so
sweet, so frail, and so disconsolate. For her sake he must do the thing,
repulsive though it might be.

"I must know more," he exclaimed. "I must learn Florimond's whereabouts,
if only that we may go to meet him when we leave Condillac to-night."

"You have arranged definitely for that?" she asked, her face lighting.

"All is in readiness," he assured her. Then, lowering his voice without
apparent reason, and speaking quickly and intently, "I must go find out
what I can," he said. "There may be a risk, but it is as nothing to
the risk we run of blundering matters through ignorance of what may be
afoot. Should any one come--which is unlikely, for all those interested
will be in the hall until the courier is dealt with--and should they
inquire into my absence, you are to know nothing of it since you have no
Italian and I no French. All that you will know will be that you believe
I went but a moment since to fetch water. You understand?"

She nodded.

"Then lock yourself in your chamber till I return."

He caught up a large earthenware vessel in which water was kept for his
own and mademoiselle's use, emptied it through the guard-room window
into the moat below, then left the room and made his way down the steps
to the courtyard.

He peered out. Not a soul was in sight. This inner courtyard was little
tenanted at that time of day, and the sentry at the door of the tower
was only placed there at nightfall. Alongside this there stood another
door, opening into a passage from which access might be gained to any
part of the chateau. Thrusting behind that door the earthenware
vessel that he carried, Garnache sped swiftly down the corridor on his
eavesdropping errand. Still his mind was in conflict. At times he cursed
his slowness, at times his haste and readiness to undertake so dirty a
business, wishing all women at the devil since by the work of women was
he put to such a shift as this.

CHAPTER XIV. FLORIMOND'S LETTER

In the great hall of Condillac, where the Marquise, her son, and
Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye had been at dinner, a sudden confusion had
been spread by the arrival of that courier so soon as it was known that
he bore letters from Florimond, Marquis de Condillac.

Madame had risen hastily, fear and defiance blending in her face,
and she had at once commanded mademoiselle's withdrawal. Valerie had
wondered might there not be letters--or, leastways, messages--for
herself from her betrothed. But her pride had suppressed the eager
question that welled up to her lips. She would, too, have questioned the
courier concerning Florimond's health; she would have asked him how the
Marquis looked, and where the messenger had left him. But of all this
that she craved to know, nothing could she bring herself to ask before
the Marquise.

She rose in silence upon hearing the Dowager order Fortunio to summon
Battista that he might re-conduct mademoiselle to her apartments,
and she moved a few paces down the hall, towards the door, in proud,
submissive readiness to depart. Yet she could not keep her eyes from the
dust-stained courier, who, having flung his hat and whip upon the floor,
was now opening his wallet, the Dowager standing before him to receive
his papers.

Marius, affecting an insouciance he did not feel, remained at table,
his page behind his chair, his hound stretched at his feet; and he now
sipped his wine, now held it to the light that he might observe the
beauty of its deep red colour.

At last Fortunio returned, and mademoiselle took her departure, head in
the air and outwardly seeming nowise concerned in what was taking place.
With her went Fortunio. And the Marquise, who now held the package she
had received from the courier, bade the page depart also.

When the three were at last alone, she paused before opening the letter
and turned again to the messenger. She made a brave figure in the
flood of sunlight that poured through the gules and azures of the long
blazoned windows, her tall, lissome figure clad in a close-fitting robe
of black velvet, her abundant glossy black hair rolled back under its
white coif, her black eyes and scarlet lips detaching from the ivory of
her face, in which no trace of emotion showed, for all the anxiety that
consumed her.

"Where left you the Marquis de Condillac?" she asked the fellow.

"At La Rochette, madame," the courier answered,' and his answer brought
Marius to his feet with an oath.

"So near?" he cried out. But the Dowager's glance remained calm and
untroubled.

"How does it happen that he did not hasten himself, to Condillac?" she
asked.

"I do not know, madame. I did not see Monsieur le Marquis. It was his
servant brought me that letter with orders to ride hither."

Marius approached his mother, his brow clouded.

"Let us see what he says," he suggested anxiously. But his mother did
not heed him. She stood balancing the package in her hand.

"Can you tell us, then, nothing of Monsieur le Marquis?"

"Nothing more than I have told you, madame."

She bade Marius call Fortunio, and then dismissed the courier, bidding
her captain see to his refreshment.

Then, alone at last with her son, she hastily tore the covering from
the letter, unfolded it and read. And Marius, moved by anxiety, came to
stand beside and just behind her, where he too might read. The letter
ran:

"MY VERY DEAR MARQUISE,--I do not doubt but that it will pleasure you
to hear that I am on my way home, and that but for a touch of fever that
has detained us here at La Rochette, I should be at Condillac as soon as
the messenger who is the bearer of these presents. A courier from Paris
found me a fortnight since in Milan, with letters setting forth that my
father had been dead six months, and that it was considered expedient at
Court that I should return home forthwith to assume the administration
of Condillac. I am lost in wonder that a communication of this nature
should have been addressed to me from Paris instead of from you, as
surely it must have been your duty to advise me of my father's decease
at the time of that untoward event. I am cast down by grief at this evil
news, and the summons from Court has brought me in all haste from Milan.
The lack of news from Condillac has been for months a matter of surprise
to me. My father's death may be some explanation of this, but scarcely
explanation enough. However, madame, I count upon it that you will be
able to dispel such doubts as I am fostering. I count too, upon being
at Condillac by the end of week, but I beg that neither you nor my
dear Marius will allow this circumstance to make any difference to
yourselves, just as, although I am returning to assume the government of
Condillac as the Court has suggested to me, I hope that yourself and my
dear brother will continue to make it your home for as long as it shall
pleasure you. So long shall it pleasure me.

"I am, my dear marquise, your very humble and very affectionate servant
and stepson,

"FLORIMOND"

When she had read to the end, the Dowager turned back and read aloud
the passage: "However, madame, I count upon it that you will be able to
dispel such doubts as I am fostering." She looked at her son, who had
shifted his position, so that he was now confronting her.

"He has his suspicions that all is not as it should be," sneered Marius.

"Yet his tone is amiable throughout. It cannot be that they said too
much in that letter from Paris." A little trill of bitter laughter
escaped her. "We are to continue to make this our home for as long as it
shall pleasure us. So long shall it pleasure him!"

Then, with a sudden seriousness, she folded the letter and, putting her
hands behind her, looked up into her son's face.

"Well?" she asked. "What are you going to do?"

"Strange that he makes no mention of Valerie" said Marius pensively.

"Pooh! A Condillac thinks lightly of his women. What are you going to
do?"

His handsome countenance, so marvellously like her own, was overcast. He
looked gloomily at his mother for a moment; then with a slight twitch
of the shoulders he turned and moved past her slowly in the direction
of the hearth. He leaned his elbow on the overmantel and rested his brow
against his clenched right hand, and stood so awhile in moody thought.
She watched him, a frown between her arrogant eyes.

"Aye, ponder it," said she. "He is at La Rochette, within a day's ride,
and only detained there by a touch of fever. In any case he promises to
be here by the end of the week. By Saturday, then, Condillac will have
passed out of our power; it will be lost to you irretrievably. Will you
lose La Vauvraye as well?"

He let his hand fall to his side, and turned, fully to face her.

"What can I do? What can we do?" he asked, a shade of petulance in his
question.

She stepped close up to him and rested her hand lightly upon his
shoulder.

"You have had three months in which to woo that girl, and you have
tarried sadly over it, Marius. You have now at most three days in which
to accomplish it. What will you do?"

"I have been maladroit perhaps," he said, with bitterness. "I have
been over-patient with her. I have counted too much upon the chance of
Florimond's being dead, as seemed from the utter lack of news of him.
Yet what could I do? Carry her off by force and compel at the dagger's
point some priest to marry us?"

She moved her hand from his shoulder and smiled, as if she derided him
and his heat.

"You want for invention, Marius," said she. "And yet I beg that you will
exert your mind, or Sunday next shall find us well-nigh homeless. I'll
take no charity from the Marquis de Condillac, nor, I think, will you."

"If all fails," said he, "we have still your house in Touraine."

"My house?" she echoed, her voice shrill with scorn. "My hovel, you
would say. Could you abide there--in such a sty?"

"_Vertudieu_! If all else failed, we might be glad of it."

"Glad of it? Not I, for one. Yet all else will fail unless you bestir
yourself in the next three days. Condillac is as good as lost to
you already, since Florimond is upon the threshold. La Vauvraye most
certainly will be lost to you as well unless you make haste to snatch it
in the little moment that is left you."

"Can I achieve the impossible, madame?" he cried, and his impatience
waxed beneath this unreasonable insistence of his mother's.

"Who asks it of you?"

"Do not you, madame?"

"I? Pish! All that I urge is that you take Valerie across the border
into Savoy where you can find a priest to marry you, and get it done
this side of Saturday."

"And is not that the impossible? She will not go with me, as you well
know, madame."

There was a moment's silence. The Dowager shot him a glance; then her
eyes fell. Her bosom stirred as if some strange excitement moved
her. Fear and shame were her emotions; for a way she knew by which
mademoiselle might be induced to go with him--not only willingly, but
eagerly, she thought--to the altar. But she was his mother, and even her
harsh nature shuddered before the task of instructing him in this vile
thing. Why had the fool not wit enough to see it for himself?

Observing her silence Marius smiled sardonically.

"You may well ponder it," said he. "It is an easy matter to tell me what
I should do. Tell me, rather, how it should be done."

His blindness stirred her anger, and her anger whelmed her hesitation.

"Were I in your place, Marius, I should find a way," said she, in a
voice utterly expressionless, her eyes averted ever from his own.

He scanned her curiously. Her agitation was plain to him, and it puzzled
him, as did the downcast glance of eyes usually so bold and insolent in
their gaze. Then he pondered her tone, so laden with expression by its
very expressionlessness, and suddenly a flood of light broke upon his
mind, revealing very clearly and hideously her meaning. He caught his
breath with a sudden gasp and blenched a little. Then his lips tightened
suddenly.

"In that case, madame," he said, after a pause, and speaking as if he
were still without revelation of her meaning, "I can but regret that you
are not in my place. For, as it is, I am thinking we shall have to make
the best of the hovel in Touraine."

She bit her lip in the intensity of her chagrin and shame. She was no
fool, nor did she imagine from his words that her meaning had been lost
upon him. She knew that he had understood, and that he chose to pretend
that he had not. She looked up suddenly, her dark eyes blazing, a splash
of colour in either cheek.

"Fool!" she snapped at him; "you lily-livered fool! Are you indeed
my son? Are you--by God!--that you talk so lightly of yielding?" She
advanced a step in his direction. "Through your cowardice you may be
content to spend your days in beggary; not so am I; nor shall I be,
so long as I have an arm and a voice. You may go hence if your courage
fails you outright; but I'll throw up the bridge and entrench myself
within these walls. Florimond de Condillac sets no foot in here while I
live; and if he should come within range of musket-shot, it will be the
worse for him."

"I think you are mad, madame--mad so to talk of resisting him, as you
are mad to call me coward. I'll leave you till you are come to a more
tranquil frame of mind." And turning upon his heel, his face on fire
from the lash of her contempt, he strode down the hall and passed out,
leaving her alone.

White again, with heaving bosom and clenched hands, she stood a moment
where he had left her, then dropped into a chair, and taking her chin
in her hand she rested her elbow on her knee. Thus she remained, the
firelight tinting her perfect profile, on which little might be read of
the storm that was raging in her soul. Another woman in her place would
have sought relief in tears, but tears came rarely to the beautiful eyes
of the Marquise de Condillac.

She sat there until the sun had passed from the windows behind her and
the corners of the room were lost in the quickening shadows. At last she
was disturbed by the entrance of a lackey, who announced that Monsieur
le Comte de Tressan, Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny, was come to Condillac.

She bade the fellow call help to clear the board, where still was set
their interrupted noontide meal, and then to admit the Seneschal.
With her back to the stirring, bustling servants she stood, pensively
regarding the flames, and a smile that was mocking rather than aught
else spread upon her face.

If all else failed her, she told herself, there would be no Touraine
hovel for her. She could always be Comtesse de Tressan. Let Marius work
out alone the punishment of his cowardice.

Away in the Northern Tower, where mademoiselle was lodged, she sat in
eager talk with Garnache, who had returned unobserved and successful
from his journey of espionage.

He had told her what from the conversation of Marius and his mother he
had learned touching the contents of that letter. Florimond lay as near
as La Rochette, detained there by a touch of fever, but promising to be
at Condillac by the end of the week. Since that was so, Valerie opined
there was no longer the need to put themselves to the trouble of the
escape they had planned. Let them wait until Florimond came.

But Garnache shook his head. He had heard more; and for all that he
accounted her at present safe from Marius, yet he made no false estimate
of that supple gentleman's character, was not deluded by his momentary
show of niceness. As the time of Florimond's arrival grew nearer, he
thought it very possible that Marius might be rendered desperate. There
was grave danger in remaining. He said naught of this, yet he convinced
mademoiselle that it were best to go.

"Though there will no longer be the need of a toilsome journey as far
as Paris," he concluded. "A four hours' ride to La Rochette, and you may
embrace your betrothed."

"Did he speak of me in his letter, know you, monsieur?" she inquired.

"I heard them say that he did not," Garnache replied. "But it may well
be that he had good reason. He may suspect more than he has written."

"In that case," she asked--and there was a wounded note in her
voice--"Why should a touch of fever keep him at La Rochette? Would a
touch of fever keep you from the woman you loved, monsieur, if you knew,
or even suspected, that she was in durance?"

"I do not know, mademoiselle. I am an old man who has never loved, and
so it would be unfair of me to pass judgment upon lovers. That they
think not as other folk is notorious; their minds are for the time
disordered."

Nevertheless he looked at her where she sat by the window, so gentle, so
lissome, so sweet, and so frail, and he had a shrewd notion that were he
Florimond de Condillac, whether he feared her in durance or not, not the
fever, nor the plague itself should keep him for the best part of a week
at La Rochette within easy ride of her.

She smiled gently at his words, and turned the conversation to the
matter that imported most.

"Tonight then, it is determined that we are to go?"

"At midnight or a little after. Be in readiness, mademoiselle, and
do not keep me waiting when I rap upon your door. Haste may be of
importance."

"You may count upon me, my friend," she answered him, and stirred by a
sudden impulse she held out her hand. "You have been very good to me,
Monsieur de Garnache. You have made life very different for me since
your coming. I had it in my mind to blame you once for your rashness in
returning alone. I was a little fool. You can never know the peace that
has come to me from having you at hand. The fears, the terrors that
possessed me before you came have all been dispelled in this last week
that you have been my sentry in two senses."

He took the hand she held out to him, and looked down at her out of his
grimy, disfigured face, an odd tenderness stirring him. He felt as might
have felt a father towards his daughter--at least, so thought he then.

"Child," he answered her, "you overrate it. I have done no less than I
could do, no more than any other would have done."

"Yet more than Florimond has done--and he my betrothed. A touch of fever
was excuse enough to keep him at La Rochette, whilst the peril of death
did not suffice to deter you from coming hither."

"You forget, mademoiselle, that, maybe, he does not know your
circumstances."

"Maybe he does not," said she, with a half-sigh. Then she looked up
into his face again. "I am sad at the thought of going, monsieur," she
surprised him by saying.

"Sad?" he cried. Then he laughed. "But what can there be to sadden you?"

"This, monsieur: that after to-night it is odds I shall never see you
more." She said it without hesitation and without coquetry, for her
upbringing had been simple and natural in an atmosphere different far
from that in which had been reared the courtly women he had known. "You
will return to Paris and the great world, and I shall live out my life
in this, little corner of Dauphiny. You will forget me in the bustle of
your career, monsieur; but I shall always hold your memory very dear
and very gratefully. You are the only friend I have ever known since my
father died excepting Florimond, though it is so long since I have seen
him, and he never came to me in times of stress as you have done."

"Mademoiselle," he answered, touched despite himself more touched than
he could have believed possible to his callous, world-worn nature--"you
make me very proud; you make me feel a little better than I am, for if
I have earned your regard and friendship, there must be some good in old
Garnache. Believe me, mademoiselle, I too shall not forget."

And thereafter they remained a spell in silence, she sitting by the
window, gazing out into the bright October sky, he standing by her
chair, thoughtfully considering her brown head so gracefully set upon
her little shoulders. A feeling came to him that was odd and unusual; he
sought to interpret it, and he supposed it to mean that he wished that
at some time in the dim past he might have married some woman who would
have borne him for daughter such a one as this.

CHAPTER XV. THE CONFERENCE

The matter that brought Monsieur de Tressan to Condillac--and brought
him in most fearful haste--was the matter of the courier who had that
day arrived at the chateau.

News of it had reached the ears of my Lord Seneschal. His mind had been
a prey to uneasiness concerning this business of rebellion in which he
had so rashly lent a hand, and he was anxious to know whence came
this courier and what news he brought. But for all his haste he had
paused--remembering it was the Marquise he went to visit--to don the
gorgeous yellow suit with the hanging sleeves which he had had from
Paris, and the crimson sash he had bought at Taillemant's, all in the
very latest mode.

Thus arrayed, his wig well curled and a clump of it caught in ribbon of
flame-coloured silk on the left side, his sword hanging from belt and
carriages richly wrought with gold, and the general courtier-like effect
rather marred by the heavy riding-boots which he would have liked to
leave behind yet was constrained to wear, he presented himself before
the Dowager, hiding his anxiety in a melting smile, and the latter in
the profoundest of bows.

The graciousness of his reception overwhelmed him almost, for in his
supreme vanity he lacked the wit to see that this cordiality might be
dictated by no more than the need they had of him at Condillac. A lackey
placed a great chair for him by the fire that he might warm himself
after his evening ride, and the Dowager, having ordered lights, sat
herself opposite him with the hearth between them.

He simpered awhile and toyed with trivialities of speech before he gave
utterance to the matter that absorbed him. Then, at last, when they were
alone, he loosed the question that was bubbling on his lips.

"I hear a courier came to Condillac to-day."

For answer she told him what he sought to learn, whence came that
courier, and what the message that he brought.

"And so, Monsieur de Tressan," she ended, "my days at Condillac are
numbered."

"Why so?" he asked, "since you say that Florimond has adopted towards
you a friendly tone. Surely he would not drive his father's widow
hence?"

She smiled at the fire in a dreamy, pensive manner.

"No," said she, "he would not drive me hence. He has offered me the
shelter of Condillac for as long as it may pleasure me to make it my
home."

"Excellent!" he exclaimed, rubbing his little fat hands and screwing the
little features of his huge red face into the grotesque semblance of a
smile. "What need to talk of going, then?"

"What need?" she echoed, in a voice dull and concentrated. "Do you ask
that, Tressan? Do you think I should elect to live upon the charity of
this man?"

For all that the Lord Seneschal may have been dull-witted, yet he had
wit enough to penetrate to the very marrow of her meaning.

"You must hate Florimond very bitterly," said he. She shrugged her
shoulders.

"I possess, I think, the faculty of feeling strongly. I can love well,
monsieur, and I can hate well. It is one or the other with me. And as
cordially as I love my own son Marius, as cordially do I detest this
coxcomb Florimond."

She expressed no reasons for her hatred of her late husband's elder son.
Hers were not reasons that could easily be put into words. They were
little reasons, trivial grains of offence which through long years had
accumulated into a mountain. They had their beginning in the foolish
grievance that had its birth with her own son, when she had realized
that but for that rosy-cheeked, well-grown boy borne to the Marquis by
his first wife, Marius would have been heir to Condillac. Her love of
her own child and her ambitions for him, her keen desire to see him fill
an exalted position in the world, caused her a thousand times a day to
wish his half-brother dead. Yet Florimond had flourished and grown, and
as he grew he manifested a character which, with all its imperfections,
was more lovable than the nature of her own offspring. And their common
father had never seen aught but the faults of Marius and the virtues
of Florimond. She had resented this, and Marius had resented it; and
Marius, having inherited with his mother's beauty his mother's arrogant,
dominant spirit, had returned with insolence such admonitions as from
time to time his father gave him, and thus the breach had grown. Later,
since he could not be heir to Condillac, the Marquise's eyes, greedy of
advancement for him, had fallen covetously upon the richer La Vauvraye,
whose lord had then no son, whose heiress was a little girl.

By an alliance easy to compass, since the lords of Condillac and La
Vauvraye were lifelong friends, Marius's fortunes might handsomely
have been mended. Yet when she herself bore the suggestion of it to
the Marquis, he had seized upon it, approved it, but adopted it for
Florimond's benefit instead.

Thereafter war had raged fiercely in the family of Condillac--a war
between the Marquis and Florimond on the one side, and the Marquise and
Marius on the other. And so bitterly was it waged that it was by the old
Marquis's suggestion that at last Florimond had gone upon his travels to
see the world and carry arms in foreign service.

Her hopes that he would take his death, as was a common thing when
warring, rose high--so high as to become almost assurance, a thing to be
reckoned with. Florimond would return no more, and her son should fill
the place to which he was entitled by his beauty of person and the high
mental gifts his doting mother saw in him.

Yet the months grew into years, and at long intervals full of hope for
the Marquise news came of Florimond, and the news was ever that he was
well and thriving, gathering honours and drinking deep of life.

And now, at last, when matters seemed to have been tumbled into her lap
that she might dispose of them as she listed; now, when in her anxiety
to see her son supplant his step-brother in the possession of La
Vauvraye--if not, perhaps, in that of Condillac as well she had done
a rashness which might end in making her and Marius outlaws, news
came that this hated Florimond was at the door; tardily returned, yet
returned in time to overthrow her schemes and to make her son the pauper
that her husband's will had seemed to aim at rendering him.

Her mind skimmed lightly over all these matters, seeking somewhere some
wrong that should stand out stark and glaring, upon which she might
seize, and offer it to the Seneschal as an explanation of her hatred.
But nowhere could she find the thing she sought. Her hatred had for
foundation a material too impalpable to be fashioned into words.
Tressan's voice aroused her from her thoughts.

"Have you laid no plans, madame?" he asked her. "It were surely a
madness now to attempt to withstand the Marquis."

"The Marquis? Ah yes--Florimond." She sat forward out of the shadows in
which her great chair enveloped her, and let candle and firelight play
about the matchless beauty of her perfect face. There was a flush upon
it, the flush of battle; and she was about to tell the Seneschal that
not while one stone of Condillac should stand upon another, not while a
gasp of breath remained in her frail body, would she surrender. But
she checked her rashness. Well might it be that in the end she should
abandon such a purpose. Tressan was ugly as a toad, the most absurd,
ridiculous bridegroom that ever led woman to the altar. Yet rumour
ran that he was rich, and as a last resource, for the sake of his
possessions she might bring herself to endure his signal shortcomings.

"I have taken no resolve as yet," said she, in a wistful voice. "I
founded hopes upon Marius which Marius threatens to frustrate. I think I
had best resign myself to the poverty of my Touraine home."

And then the Seneschal realized that the time was now. The opportunity
he might have sought in vain was almost thrust upon him. In the spirit
he blessed Florimond for returning so opportunely; in the flesh he rose
from the chair and, without more ado, he cast himself upon his knees
before the Dowager. He cast himself down, and the Dowager experienced
a faint stirring of surprise that she heard no flop such as must attend
the violent falling of so fat a body. But the next instant, realizing
the purpose of his absurd posture, she shrank back with a faint gasp,
and her face was mercifully blurred to his sight once more amid the
shadows of her chair. Thus was he spared the look of utter loathing, of
unconquerable, irrepressible disgust that leapt into her countenance.

His voice quivered with ridiculous emotion, his little fat red fingers
trembled as he outheld them in a theatrical gesture of supplication.

"Never contemplate poverty, madame, until you have discarded me," he
implored her. "Say but that you will, and you shall be lady of Tressan.
All that I have would prove but poor adornment to a beauty such as
yours, and I should shrink from offering it you, were it not that, with
it all, I can offer you the fondest heart in France. Marquise--Clotilde,
I cast myself humbly at your feet. Do with me as you will. I love you."

By an effort she crushed down her loathing of him--a loathing that grew
a hundredfold as she beheld him now transformed by his amorousness into
the semblance almost of a satyr--and listened to his foolish rantings.

As Marquise de Condillac it hurt her pride to listen and not have him
whipped for his audacity; as a woman it insulted her. Yet the Marquise
and the woman she alike repressed. She would give him no answer--she
could not, so near was she to fainting with disdain of him--yet must
she give him hope against the time when, should all else fail, she might
have to swallow the bitter draught he was now holding to her lips. So
she temporized.

She controlled her voice into a tone of gentle sadness; she set a mask
of sorrow upon her insolent face.

"Monsieur, monsieur," she sighed, and so far overcame her nausea as for
an instant to touch his hand in a little gesture of caress, "you must
not speak so to a widow of six months, nor must I listen."

The quivering grew in his hands and voice; but no longer did they shake
through fear of a rebuff: they trembled now in the eager strength of the
hope he gathered from her words. She was so beautiful, so peerless, so
noble, so proud--and he so utterly unworthy--that naught but her plight
had given him courage to utter his proposal. And she answered him in
such terms!

"You give me hope, Marquise? If I come again--?"

She sighed, and her face, which was once more within the light, showed a
look of sad inquiry.

"If I thought that what you have said, you have said out of pity,
because you fear lest my necessities should hurt me, I could give you
no hope at all. I have my pride, mon ami. But if what you have said
you would still have said though I had continued mistress of Condillac,
then, Tressan, you may repeat it to me hereafter, at a season when I may
listen."

His joy welled up and overflowed in him as overflows a river in time of
spate.

He bent forward, caught her hand, and bore it to his lips.

"Clotilde!" he cried, in a smothered voice; then the door opened, and
Marius stepped into the long chamber.

At the creaking sound of the opening door the Seneschal bestirred
himself to rise. Even the very young care not so to be surprised,
how much less, then, a man well past the prime of life? He came up
laboriously--the more laboriously by virtue of his very efforts to show
himself still nimble in his mistress's eyes. Upon the intruder he turned
a crimson, furious face, perspiration gleaming like varnish on brow and
nose. At sight of Marius, who stood arrested, scowling villainously upon
the pair, the fire died suddenly from his glance.

"Ah, my dear Marius," said he, with a flourish and an air of being
mightily at his ease. But the young man's eyes went over and beyond him
to rest in a look of scrutiny upon his mother. She had risen too, and he
had been in time to see the startled manner of her rising. In her cheeks
there was a guilty flush, but her eyes boldly met and threw back her
son's regard.

Marius came slowly down the room, and no word was spoken. The Seneschal
cleared his throat with noisy nervousness. Madame stood hand on hip, the
flush fading slowly, her glance resuming its habitual lazy insolence. By
the fire Marius paused and kicked the logs into a blaze, regardless of
the delicate fabric of his rosetted shoes.

"Monsieur le Seneschal," said madame calmly, "came to see us in the
matter of the courier."

"Ah!" said Marius, with an insolent lifting of his brows and a sidelong
look at Tressan; and Tressan registered in his heart a vow that when he
should have come to wed the mother, he would not forget to take payment
for that glance from her pert son.

"Monsieur le Comte will remain and sup with us before riding back to
Grenoble," she added.

"Ah!" said he again, in the same tone. And that for the moment was all
he said. He remained by the fire, standing between them where he
had planted himself in the flesh, as if to symbolize the attitude he
intended in the spirit.

But one chance he had, before supper was laid, of a word alone with his
mother, in her own closet.

"Madame," he said, his sternness mingling with alarm, "are you mad that
you encourage the suit of this hedgehog Tressan?"

She looked him up and down with a deliberate eye, her lip curling a
little.

"Surely, Marius, it is my own concern."

"Not so," he answered her, and his grasp fastened almost viciously on
her wrist. "I think that it is mine as well. Mother, bethink you," and
his tone changed to an imploring key, "bethink you what you would do!
Would you--you--mate with such a thing as that?"

His emphasis of the pronoun was very eloquent. Not in all the words of
the French language could he have told her better how high he placed her
in his thoughts, how utterly she must fall, how unutterably be soiled by
an alliance with Tressan.

"I had hoped you would have saved me from it, Marius," she answered him,
her eyes seeming to gaze down into the depths of his. "At La Vauvraye I
had hoped to live out my widowhood in tranquil dignity. But--" She let
her arms fall sharply to her sides, and uttered a little sneering laugh.

"But, mother," he cried, "between the dignity of La Vauvraye and the
indignity of Tressan, surely there is some middle course?"

"Aye," she answered scornfully, "starvation on a dunghill in
Touraine--or something near akin to it, for which I have no stomach."

He released her wrist and stood with bent head, clenching and
unclenching his long white hands, and she watched him, watching in him
the working of his proud and stubborn spirit.

"Mother," he cried at last, and the word sounded absurd between them, by
so little did he seem the younger of the twain, "mother, you shall not
do it you must not!"

"You leave me little alternative--alas!" sighed she. "Had you been more
adroit you had been wed by now, Marius, and the future would give us no
concern. As it is, Florimond comes home, and we--" She spread her hands
and thrust out her nether lip in a grimace that was almost ugly. Then:
"Come," she said briskly. "Supper is laid, and my Lord Seneschal will be
awaiting us."

And before he could reply she had swept past him and taken her way
below. He followed gloomily, and in gloom sat he at table, never
heeding the reckless gaiety of the Seneschal and the forced mirth of the
Marquise. He well understood the sort of tacit bargain that his mother
had made with him. She had seen her advantage in his loathing of the
proposed union with Tressan, and she had used it to the full. Either he
must compel Valerie to wed him this side of Saturday or resign himself
to see his mother--his beautiful, peerless mother--married to this skin
of lard that called itself a man.

Living, he had never entertained for his father a son's respect, nor,
dead, did he now reverence his memory as becomes a son. But in that
hour, as he sat at table, facing this gross wooer of his mother's, his
eyes were raised to the portrait of the florid-visaged haughty Marquis
de Condillac, where it looked down upon them from the panelled wall, and
from his soul he offered up to that portrait of his dead sire an apology
for the successor whom his widow destined him.

He ate little, but drank great draughts, as men will when their mood
is sullen and dejected, and the heat of the wine, warming his veins and
lifting from him some of the gloom that had settled over him, lent him
anon a certain recklessness very different from the manner of his sober
moments.

Chancing suddenly to raise his eyes from the cup into which he had been
gazing, absorbed as gazes a seer into his crystal, he caught on the
Seneschal's lips so odious a smile, in the man's eyes so greedy, hateful
a leer as he bent them on the Marquise, that he had much ado not to
alter the expression of that flabby face by hurling at it the cup he
held.

He curbed himself; he smiled sardonically upon the pair; and in that
moment he swore that be the cost what it might, he would frustrate the
union of those two. His thoughts flew to Valerie, and the road they took
was fouled with the mud of ugly deeds. A despair, grim at first, then
mocking, took possession of him. He loved Valerie to distraction. Loved
her for herself, apart from all worldly advantages that must accrue to
him from an alliance with her. His mother saw in that projected marriage
no more than the acquisition of the lands of La Vauvraye, and she may
even have thought that he himself saw no more. In that she was wrong;
but because of it she may have been justified of her impatience with him
at the tardiness, the very clumsiness with which he urged his suit. How
was she to know that it was just the sincerity of his passion made
him clumsy? For like many another, normally glib, self-assured, and
graceful, Marius grew halting, shy, and clumsy only where he loved.

But in the despair that took him now the quality of his passion seemed
to change. Partly it was the wine, partly the sight of this other
lover--of whom there must be an end--whose very glance seemed to him an
insult to his mother. His imagination had taken fire that night, and it
had ripened him for any villainy. The Seneschal and the wine, between
them, had opened the floodgates of all that was evil in his nature, and
that evil thundered out in a great torrent that bid fair to sweep all
before it.

And suddenly, unexpectedly for the others, who were by now resigned to
his moody silence, the evil found expression. The Marquise had spoken
of something--something of slight importance--that must be done before
Florimond returned. Abruptly Marius swung round in his seat to face
his mother. "Must this Florimond return?" he asked, and for all that he
uttered no more words, so ample in their expression were those four that
he had uttered and the tone of them, that his meaning left little work
to the imagination.

Madame turned to stare at him, surprise ineffable in her glance--not
at the thing that he suggested, but at the abruptness with which the
suggestion came. The cynical, sneering tone rang in her ears after the
words were spoken, and she looked in his face for a confirmation of
their full purport.

She observed the wine-flush on his cheek, the wine-glitter in his eye,
and she remarked the slight smile on his lips and the cynical assumption
of nonchalance with which he fingered the jewel in his ear as he
returned her gaze. She beheld now in her son a man more purposeful than
she had ever known before.

A tense silence had followed his words, and the Lord Seneschal gaped
at him, some of the colour fading from his plethoric countenance,
suspecting as he did the true drift of Marius's suggestion. At last it
was madame who spoke--very softly, with a narrowing of the eyes.

"Call Fortunio," was all she said, but Marius understood full well the
purpose for which she would have Fortunio called.

With a half-smile he rose, and going to the door he bade his page who
was idling in the anteroom go summon the captain. Then he paced slowly
back, not to the place he had lately occupied at table, but to the
hearth, where he took his stand with his shoulders squared to the
overmantel.

Fortunio came, fair-haired and fresh-complexioned as a babe, his supple,
not ungraceful figure tawdrily clad in showy clothes of poor material
the worse for hard usage and spilt wine. The Countess bade him sit, and
with her own hands she poured a cup of Anjou for him.

In some wonder, and, for all his ordinary self-possession, with a little
awkwardness, the captain did her bidding, and with an apologetic air he
took the seat she offered him.

He drank this wine, and here was a spell of silence till Marius, grown
impatient, brutally put the thing for which the Marquise sought delicate
words.

"We have sent for you, Fortunio," said he, in a blustering tone, "to
inquire of you what price you'd ask to cut the throat of my brother, the
Marquis de Condillac."

The Seneschal sank back in his chair with a gasp. The captain, a frown
between his frank-seeming, wide-set eyes, started round to look at the
boy. The business was by no means too strong for the ruffler's stomach,
but the words in which it was conveyed to him most emphatically were.

"Monsieur de Condillac," said he, with an odd assumption of dignity, "I
think you have mistaken your man. I am a soldier, not a cut-throat."

"But yes," the Marquise soothed him, throwing herself instantly into the
breach, and laying a long, slender hand upon the frayed green velvet
of the captain's sleeve. "What my son means and what he says are vastly
different things."

"It will sorely tax your wits, madame," laughed Marius brutally, "to
make clear that difference."

And then the Seneschal nervously cleared his throat and muttering that
it waxed late and he must be riding home, made shift to rise. Him, too,
the Marquise at once subdued. She was not minded that he should go just
yet. It might be useful to her hereafter to have had him present at this
conference, into which she meant to draw him until she should have made
him one with them, a party to their guilt. For the task she needed not
over many words: just one or two and a melting glance or so, and the
rebellion in his bosom was quelled at once.

But with the captain her wiles were not so readily successful. He had no
hopes of winning her to wife--haply no desire, since he was not a man
of very great ambitions. On the other hand, he had against him the
very worst record in France, and for all that he might embark upon this
business under the auspices of the Lord Seneschal himself, he knew not
how far the Lord Seneschal might dare to go thereafter to save him from
a hanging, should it come to that.

He said as much in words. In a business of this kind, he knew from
experience, the more difficulties he advanced, the better a bargain
he drove in the end; and if he was to be persuaded to risk his neck in
this, he should want good payment. But even for good payment on this
occasion he was none too sure as yet that he would let himself be
persuaded.

"Monsieur Fortunio," the Marquise said, very softly, "heed not Monsieur
Marius's words. Attend to me. The Marquis de Condillac, as no doubt you
will have learned for yourself, is lying at La Rochette. Now it happens
that he is noxious to us--let the reasons be what they may. We need a
friend to put him out of our way. Will you be that friend?"

"You will observe," sneered Marius, "how wide a difference there is
between what the Marquise suggests and my own frank question of what
price you would take to cut my brother's throat."

"I observe no difference, which is what you would say," Fortunio
answered truculently, his head well back, his brown eyes resentful
of offence--for none can be so resentful of imputed villainy as your
villain who is thorough-paced. "And," he concluded, "I return you the
same answer, madame--that I am no cut-throat."

She repressed her anger at Marius's sneering interference, and made a
little gesture of dismay with her eloquent white hands.

"But we do not ask you to cut a throat."

"I have heard amiss, then," said he, his insolence abating nothing.

"You have heard aright, but you have understood amiss. There are other
ways of doing these things. If it were but the cutting of a throat,
should we have sent for you? There are a dozen in the garrison would
have sufficed for our purpose."

"What is it, then, you need?" quoth he.

"We want an affair contrived with all decency. The Marquis is at the
Sanglier Noir at La Rochette. You can have no difficulty in finding
him, and having found him, less difficulty still in giving or provoking
insult."

"Excellent," murmured Marius from the background. "It is such an
enterprise as should please a ready swordsman of your calibre,
Fortunio."

"A duel?" quoth the fellow, and his insolence went out of him, thrust
out by sheer dismay; his mouth fell open. A duel was another affair
altogether. "But, Sangdieu! what if he should slay me? Have you thought
of that?"

"Slay you?" cried the Marquise, her eyes resting on his face with an
expression as of wonder at such a question. "You jest, Fortunio."

"And he with the fever," put in Marius, sneering.

"Ah!" muttered Fortunio. "He has the fever? The fever is something.
But--but--accidents will happen."

"Florimond was ever an indifferent swordsman," murmured Marius dreamily,
as if communing with himself.

The captain wheeled upon him once more.

"Why, then, Monsieur Marius," said he, "since that is so and you are
skilled--as skilled as am I, or more--and he has a fever, where is the
need to hire me to the task?"

"Where?" echoed Marius. "What affair may that be of yours? We ask you
to name a price on which you will do this thing. Have done with
counter-questions."

Marius was skilled with the foils, as Fortunio said, but he cared not
for unbaited steel, and he was conscious of it, so that the captain's
half-sneer had touched him on the raw. But he was foolish to take that
tone in answer. There was a truculent, Southern pride in the ruffler
which sprang immediately into life and which naught that they could say
thereafter would stamp out.

"Must I say again that you mistake your man?" was his retort, and as
he spoke he rose, as though to signify that the subject wearied him and
that his remaining to pursue it must be idle. "I am not of those to
whom you can say: 'I need such a one killed, name me the price at which
you'll be his butcher'."

The Marquise wrung her hands in pretty mimicry of despair, and poured
out soothing words, as one might pour oil upon stormy waters. The
Seneschal sat in stolid silence, a half-scared spectator of this odd
scene, what time the Marquise talked and talked until she had brought
Fortunio back to some measure of subjection.

Such reasoning as she made use of she climaxed by an offer of no less a
sum than a hundred pistoles. The captain licked his lips and pulled at
his mustachios. For all his vaunted scorn of being a butcher at a price,
now that he heard the price he seemed not half so scornful.

"Tell me again the thing that you need doing and the manner of it," said
he, as one who was moved to reconsider. She told him, and when she had
done he made a compromise.

"If I go upon this business, madame, I go not alone."

"Oh, as for that," said Marius, "it shall be as you will. Take what men
you want with you."

"And hang with them afterwards, maybe," he sneered, his insolence
returning. "The hundred pistoles would avail me little then. Look you,
Monsieur de Condillac, and you, madame, if I go, I'll need to take with
me a better hostage than the whole garrison of this place. I'll need for
shield some one who will see to it that he is not hurt himself, just as
I shall see to it that he is hurt before I am."

"What do you mean? Speak out, Fortunio," the Marquise bade him.

"I mean, madame, that I will go, not to do this thing, but to stand by
and render help if help be needed. Let Monsieur de Condillac go, and
I will go with him, and I will undertake to see to it that he returns
unhurt and that we leave the other stark."

Both started, and the Seneschal leaned heavily upon the table. He was
not, with all his faults, a man of blood, and this talk of butchery
turned him sick and faint.

Vainly now did the Marquise seek to alter the captain's resolution; but
in this she received a sudden check from Marius himself. He cut in upon
her arguments to ask the captain:

"How can you promise so much? Do you mean that you and I must fall upon
him? You forget that he will have men about him. A duel is one thing,
a rough-and-tumble another, and we shall fare none so well in this, I'm
thinking."

The captain closed one eye, and a leer of subtle cunning overspread his
face.

"I've thought of that," said he. "Neither a duel nor a rough-and-tumble
do I propose, but something between the two; something that shall seem a
duel yet be a rough-and-tumble."

"Explain yourself."

"What further explanation does it ask? We come upon Monsieur le Marquis
where his men are not. We penetrate, let us say, into his chamber. I
turn the key in the door. We are alone with him and you provoke him. He
is angry, and must fight you there and then. I am your friend; I must
fill the office of second for both sides. You engage, and I stand aside
and let you fight it out. You say he is indifferently skilled with the
sword, and, in addition, that he has a fever. Thus you should contrive
to put your steel through him, and a duel it will have been. But if by
luck or skill he should have you in danger, I shall be at hand to flick
in my sword at the right moment and make an opening through which you
may send yours home."

"Believe me it were better--" began the Dowager. But Marius, who of a
sudden was much taken with the notion, again broke in.

"Are you to be depended upon to make no mistake, Fortunio?"

"Per Bacco!" swore the ruffler. "A mistake must cost me a hundred
pistoles. I think you may depend upon me there. If I err at all, it will
be on the side of eagerness to see you make short work of him. You have
my answer now, monsieur. If we talk all night, you shall not move me
further. But if my proposal suits you, I am your man."

"And I yours, Fortunio," answered Marius, and there was a ring almost of
exultation in his voice.

The Dowager looked from one to the other, as if she were weighing the
men and satisfying herself that Marius ran no risk. She put a question
or two to her son, another to the captain; then, seeming satisfied with
what had been agreed, she nodded her head and told them they had best be
stirring with the dawn.

"You will have light enough by half-past six. Do not delay later in
taking the road. And see that you are back here by nightfall; I shall be
anxious till you are returned."

She poured wine again for the captain, and Marius coming up to the table
filled himself a glass, which he tossed off. The Marquise was speaking
to Tressan.

"Will you not drink to the success of the venture?" she asked him, in a
coaxing tone, her eyes upon his own. "I think we are like to see the
end of our troubles now, monsieur, and Marius shall be lord both of
Condillac and La Vauvraye."

And the gross, foolish Seneschal, under the spell of her magnificent
eyes, slowly raised his cup to his lips and drank to the success of that
murderous business. Marius stood still, a frown between his eyes haled
thither by the mention of La Vauvraye. He might be winning it, as his
mother said, but he would have preferred to have won it differently.
Then the frown was smoothed away; a sardonic smile replaced it; another
cup of wine he poured himself. Then, without word to any there, he
turned on his heel and went from the room, a trifle unsteady in his
gait, yet with such lines of purposefulness in the way he bore himself
that the three of them stared after him in dull surprise.

CHAPTER XVI. THE UNEXPECTED

In her apartments in the Northern Tower Valerie had supped, and--to
spare Monsieur de Garnache the full indignity of that part of the
offices he was charged with--she had herself removed the cloth and set
the things in the guard-room, where they might lie till morning. When
that was done--and despite her protests, Garnache had insisted upon
lending a hand--the Parisian reminded her that it was already after
nine, and urged her to make such preparations as incumbed her for their
journey.

"My preparations are soon made," she assured him with a smile. "I need
but what I may carry in a cloak."

They fell to talking of their impending flight, and they laughed
together at the discomfiture that would be the Dowager's and her son's
when, in the morning, they came to discover the empty cage. From that
they passed on to talk of Valerie herself, of her earlier life at
La Vauvraye, and later the conversation shifted to Garnache, and she
questioned him touching the warring he had seen in early youth, and
afterwards asked him for particulars of Paris--that wonderful city which
to her mind was the only earthly parallel of Paradise--and of the life
at Court.

Thus in intimate talk did they while away the time of waiting, and in
the hour that sped they came, perhaps, to know more of each other than
they had done hitherto. Intimate, indeed, had they unconsciously become
already. Their singular position, locked together in that tower--a
position utterly impossible under any but the conditions that attended
it--had conduced to that good-fellowship, whilst the girl's trust and
dependence upon the man, the man's observance of that trust, and his
determination to show her that it had not been misplaced, had done the
rest.

But to-night they seemed to have drawn nearer in spirit to each other,
and that, maybe, it was that prompted Valerie to sigh, and in her sweet,
unthinking innocence to say again:

"I am truly sorry, Monsieur de Garnache, that our sojourn here is coming
to an end."

He was no coxcomb, and he set no false value on the words. He laughed
for answer, as he rejoined:

"Not so am I, mademoiselle. Nor shall I know peace of mind again until
this ill-omened chateau is a good three leagues or so behind us. Sh!
What was that?"

He came instantly to his feet, his face intent and serious. He had been
sitting at his ease in an armchair, over the back of which he had tossed
the baldric from which his sword depended. The clang of the heavy door
below, striking the wall as it was pushed open, had reached his ears.

"Can it be time already?" asked mademoiselle; yet a panic took her, and
she blenched a little.

He shook his head.

"Impossible," said he; "it is not more than ten o'clock. Unless that
fool Arsenio has blundered--" He stopped. "Sh!" he whispered. "Some one
is coming here."

And suddenly he realized the peril that might lie in being found thus in
her company. It alarmed him more than did the visit itself, so unusual
at this hour. He saw that he had not time to reach the guard-room;
he would be caught in the act of coming forth, and that might be
interpreted by the Dowager or her son--if it should happen to be one
or the other of them--as a hurried act of flight such as guilt might
prompt. Perhaps he exaggerated the risk; but their fortunes at Condillac
had reached a point where they must not be jeopardized by any chance
however slight.

"To your chamber, mademoiselle," he whispered fearfully, and he pointed
to the door of the inner room. "Lock yourself in. Quick! Sh!" And he
signed frantically to her to go silently.

Swift and quietly as a mouse she glided from the room and softly closed
the door of her chamber and turned the key in a lock, which Garnache had
had the foresight to keep well oiled. He breathed more freely when it
was done.

A step sounded in the guard-room. He sank without a rustle into the
chair from which he had risen, rested his head against the back of it,
closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and dissembled sleep.

The steps came swiftly across the guard-room floor, soft, as of one
lightly shod; and Garnache wondered was it the mother or the son, just
as he wondered what this ill-come visitor might be seeking.

The door of the antechamber was pushed gently open--it had stood
ajar--and under the lintel appeared the slender figure of Marius, still
in his brown velvet suit as Garnache last had seen him. He paused a
moment to peer into the chamber. Then he stepped forward, frowning to
behold "Battista" so cosily ensconced.

"Ola there!" he cried, and kicked the sentry's outstretched legs, the
more speedily to wake him. "Is this the watch you keep?"

Garnache opened his eyes and stared a second dully at the disturber
of his feigned slumbers. Then, as if being more fully awakened he
recognized his master, he heaved himself suddenly to his feet and bowed.

"Is this the watch you keep?" quoth Marius again, and Garnache, scanning
the youth's face with foolishly smiling eyes, noted the flush on his
cheek, the odd glitter in his handsome eyes, and even caught a whiff
of wine upon his breath. Alarm grew in Garnache's mind, but his face
maintained its foolish vacancy, its inane smile. He bowed again and,
with a wave of the hands towards the inner chamber,

"La damigella a la," said he.

For all that Marius had no Italian he understood the drift of the
words, assisted as they were by the man's expressive gesture. He sneered
cruelly.

"It would be an ugly thing for you, my ugly friend, if she were not,"
he answered. "Away with you. I shall call you when I need you." And he
pointed to the door.

Garnache experienced some dismay, some fear even. He plied his wits,
and he determined that he had best seem to apprehend from his gestures
Marius's meaning; but apprehend it in part only, and go no further than
the other side of that door.

He bowed, therefore, for the third time, and with another of his foolish
grins he shuffled out of the chamber, pulling the door after him, so
that Marius should not see how near at hand he stayed.

Marius, without further heeding him, stepped to mademoiselle's door and
rapped on a panel with brisk knuckles.

"Who is there?" she inquired from within.

"It is I--Marius. Open, I have something I must say to you."

"Will it not keep till morning?"

"I shall be gone by then," he answered impatiently, "and much depends
upon my seeing you ere I go. So open. Come!"

There followed a pause, and Garnache in the outer room set his teeth and
prayed she might not anger Marius. He must be handled skillfully, lest
their flight should be frustrated at the last moment. He prayed, too,
that there might be no need for his intervention. That would indeed be
the end of all--a shipwreck within sight of harbour. He promised himself
that he would not lightly intervene. For the rest this news of Marius's
intended departure filled him with a desire to know something of the
journey on which he was bound:

Slowly mademoiselle's door opened. White and timid she appeared.

"What do you want, Marius?"

"Now and always and above all things the sight of you, Valerie," said
he, and the flushed cheek, the glittering eye, and wine-laden breath
were as plain to her as they had been to Garnache, and they filled her
with a deeper terror. Nevertheless she came forth at his bidding.

"I see that you were not yet abed," said he. "It is as well. We must
have a talk." He set a chair for her and begged her to be seated; then
he perched himself on the table, his hands gripping the edges of it on
either side of him, and he turned his eyes upon her.

"Valerie," he said slowly, "the Marquis de Condillac, my brother, is at
La Rochette."

"He is coming home!" she cried, clasping her hands and feigning surprise
in word and glance.

Marius shook his head and smiled grimly.

"No," said he. "He is not coming home. That is--not unless you wish it."

"Not unless I wish it? But naturally I wish it!"

"Then, Valerie, if you would have what you wish, so must I. If Florimond
is ever to come to Condillac again, you must be my wife."

He leaned towards her now, supported by his elbow, so that his face was
close to hers, a deeper flush upon it, a brighter glitter in his black
eyes, his vinous breath enveloping and suffocating her. She shrank back,
her hands locking themselves one in the other till the knuckles showed
white.

"What--what is it you mean?" she faltered.

"No more than I have said; no less. If you love him well enough to
sacrifice yourself," and his lips curled sardonically at the word, "then
marry me and save him from his doom."

"What doom?" Her voice came mechanically, her lips seeming scarce to
move.

He swung down from the table and stood before her.

"I will tell you," he said, in a voice very full of promise. "I love
you, Valerie, above all else on earth or, I think, in heaven; and I'll
not yield you to him. Say 'No' to me now, and at daybreak I start for La
Rochette to win you from him at point of sword."

Despite her fears she could not repress a little smile of scorn.

"Is that all?" said she. "Why, if you are so rash, it is yourself,
assuredly, will be slain."

He smiled tranquilly at that reflection upon his courage and his skill.

"So might it befall if I went alone," said he. She understood. Her eyes
dilated with horror, with loathing of him. The angry words that sprang
to her lips were not to be denied.

"You cur, you cowardly assassin!" she blazed at him. "I might have
guessed that in some such cutthroat manner would your vaunt of winning
me at the sword-point be accomplished."

She watched the colour fade from his cheeks, and the ugly, livid hue
that spread in its room to his very lips. Yet it did not daunt her. She
was on her feet, confronting him ere he had time to speak again. Her
eyes flashed, and her arm pointed quivering to the door.

"Go!" she bade him, her voice harsh for once. "Out of my sight! Go! Do
your worst, so that you leave me. I'll hold no traffic with you."

"Will you not?" said he, through setting teeth, and suddenly he caught
the wrist of that outstretched arm. But she saw nothing of immediate
danger. The only danger that she knew was the danger that threatened
Florimond, and little did that matter since at midnight she was to
leave Condillac to reach La Rochette in time to warn her betrothed. The
knowledge gave her confidence and an added courage.

"You have offered me your bargain," she told him. "You have named your
price and you have heard my refusal. Now go."

"Not yet awhile," said he, in a voice so odiously sweet that Garnache
caught his breath.

He drew her towards him. Despite her wild struggles he held her fast
against his breast. Do what she would, he rained his hot kisses on her
face and hair, till at last, freeing a hand, she smote him with all her
might across the face.

He let her go then. He fell back with an oath, a patch of fingermarks
showing red on his white countenance.

"That blow has killed Florimond de Condillac," he told her viciously.
"He dies at noon to-morrow. Ponder it, my pretty."

"I care not what you do so that you leave me," she answered defiantly,
restraining by a brave effort the tears of angry distress that welled
up from her stricken heart. And no less stricken, no less angry was
Garnache where he listened. It was by an effort that he had restrained
himself from bursting in upon them when Marius had seized her. The
reflection that were he to do so all would irretrievably be ruined alone
had stayed him.

Marius eyed the girl a moment, his face distorted by the rage that was
in him.

"By God!" he swore, "if I cannot have your love, I'll give you cause
enough to hate me."

"Already have you done that most thoroughly," said she. And Garnache
cursed this pertness of hers which was serving to dare him on.

The next moment there broke from her a startled cry. Marius had seized
her again and was crushing her frail body in his arms.

"I shall kiss your lips before I go, ma mie," said he, his voice thick
now with a passion that was not all of anger. And then, while he still
struggled to have his way with her, a pair of arms took him about the
waist like hoops of steel.

In his surprise he let her free, and in that moment he was swung back
and round and cast a good six paces down the room.

He came to a standstill by the table, at which he clutched to save
himself from falling, and turned bewildered, furious eyes upon
"Battista," by whom he now dimly realized that he had been assailed.

Garnache's senses had all left him in that moment when Valerie had cried
out. He cast discretion to the winds; reason went out of him, and only
blind anger remained to drive him into immediate action. And as suddenly
as that flood of rage had leaped, as suddenly did it ebb now that he
found himself face to face with the outraged Condillac and began to
understand the magnitude of the folly he had committed.

Everything was lost now, utterly and irretrievably--lost as a dozen
other fine emprises had been by his sudden and ungoverned frenzy. God!
What a fool he was! What a cursed, drivelling fool! What, after all, was
a kiss or two, compared with all the evil that might now result from his
interference? Haply Marius would have taken them and departed, and at
midnight they would have been free to go from Condillac.

The future would not have been lacking in opportunities to seek out and
kill Marius for that insult.

Why could he not have left the matter to the future? But now, with
Florimond to be murdered on the morrow at La Rochette, himself likely
to be murdered within the hour at Condillac, Valerie was at their mercy
utterly.

Wildly and vainly did he strive even then to cover up the foolish thing
that he had done. He bowed apologetically to Marius; he waved his hands
and filled the air with Italian phrases, frenziedly uttered, as if by
the very vigour of them he sought to drive explanation into his master's
brain. Marius watched and listened, but his rage nowise abated; it grew,
instead, as if that farrago of a language he did not understand were
but an added insult. An oath was all he uttered. Then he swung round
and caught Garnache's sword from the chair beside him, where it still
rested, and Garnache in that moment cursed the oversight. Whipping
the long, keen blade from its sheath, Marius bore down upon the rash
meddler.

"Par Dieu!" he swore between his teeth. "We'll see the colour of your
dirty blood, you that lay hands upon a gentleman."

But before he could send home the weapon, before Garnache could move to
defend himself, Valerie had slipped between them. Marius looked into
her white, determined face, and was smitten with surprise. What was this
hind to her that she should interfere at the risk of taking the sword
herself?

Then a slow smile spread upon his face. He was smarting still under
her disdain and resistance, as well as under a certain sense of the
discomfiture this fellow had put upon him. He saw a way to hurt her, to
abase her pride, and cut her to the very soul with shame.

"You are singularly concerned in this man's life," said he, an odious
undercurrent of meaning in his voice.

"I would not have you murder him," she answered, "for doing no more than
madame your mother bade him."

"I make no doubt he has proved a very excellent guard," he sneered.

Even now all might have been well. With that insult Marius might
consider that he had taken payment for the discomfiture he had suffered.
He might have bethought him that, perhaps, as she said, "Battista"
had done no more than observe the orders he had received--a trifle
excessively, maybe, yet faithfully nevertheless. Thinking thus, he might
even have been content to go his ways and take his fill of vengeance by
slaying Florimond upon the morrow. But Garnache's rash temper, rising
anew, tore that last flimsy chance to shreds.

The insult that mademoiselle might overlook might even not have fully
understood--set him afire with indignation for her sake. He forgot his
role, forgot even that he had no French.

"Mademoiselle," he cried, and she gasped in her affright at this ruinous
indiscretion, "I beg that you will stand aside." His voice was low and
threatening, but his words were woefully distinct.

"Par la mort Dieu!" swore Marius, taken utterly aback. "What may your
name be--you who hitherto have had no French?"

Almost thrusting mademoiselle aside, Garnache stood out to face him, the
flush of hot anger showing through the dye on his cheeks.

"My name," said he, "is Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache, and my
business now to make an end of one at least of this obscene brood of
Condillac."

And, without more ado, he caught up a chair and held it before him in
readiness to receive the other's onslaught.

But Marius hung back an instant--at first in sheer surprise, later in
fear. He had some knowledge of the fellow's methods. Even the sword he
wielded gave him little confidence opposed to Garnache with a chair. He
must have help. His eyes sought the door, measuring the distance. Ere he
could reach it Garnache would cut him off. There was nothing for it
but to attempt to drive the Parisian back. And so with a sudden rush he
advanced to the attack. Garnache fell back and raised his chair, and in
that instant mademoiselle once more intervened between them.

"Stand aside, mademoiselle," cried Garnache, who now, grown cool, as was
his way when once he was engaged, saw clearly through the purpose formed
by Marius. "Stand aside, or we shall have him giving the alarm."

He leapt clear of her to stop Marius's sudden rush for the door. On the
very threshold the young man was forced to turn and defend himself, lest
his brains be dashed out by that ponderous weapon Garnache was handling
with a rare facility. But the mischief was done, in that he had reached
the threshold. Backing, he defended himself and gained the anteroom.
Garnache followed, but the clumsy chair was defensive rather than
offensive, and Marius's sword meanwhile darted above it and below it,
forcing him to keep a certain distance.

And now Marius raised his voice and shouted with all the power of his
lungs:

"To me! To me! Fortunio! Abdon! To me, you dogs! I am beset."

From the courtyard below rose an echo of his words, repeated in a shout
by the sentinel, who had overheard them, and they caught the swift fall
of the fellow's feet as he ran for help. Furious, picturing to himself
how the alarm would spread like a conflagration through the chateau,
cursing his headstrong folly yet determined that Marius at least should
not escape him, Garnache put forth his energies to hinder him from
gaining the door that opened on to the stairs. From the doorway of the
antechamber mademoiselle, with a white face and terrified eyes, watched
the unequal combat and heard the shouts for help. Anon despair might
whelm her at the thought of how they had lost their opportunity of
escaping; but for the present she had no thought save for the life of
that brave man who was defending himself with an unwieldy chair.

Garnache leapt suddenly aside to take his opponent in the flank and
thus turn him from his backward progress towards the outer door. The
manoeuvre succeeded, and gradually, always defending himself, Garnache
circled farther round him until he was between Marius and the threshold.

And now there came a sound of running feet on the uneven stones of the
courtyard. Light gleamed on the staircase, and breathless voices were
wafted up to the two men. Garnache bethought him that his last hour was
assuredly at hand. Well, if he must take his death, he might as well
take it here upon Marius's sword as upon another's. So he would risk
it for the sake of leaving upon Marius some token by which he might
remember him. He swung his chair aloft, uncovering himself for a second.
The young man's sword darted in like a shaft of light. Nimbly Garnache
stepped aside to avoid it, and moved nearer his opponent. Down crashed
the chair, and down went Marius, stunned and bleeding, under its
terrific blow. The sword clattered from his hand and rolled, with a
pendulum-like movement, to the feet of Garnache.

The Parisian flung aside his chair and stooped to seize that very
welcome blade. He rose, grasping the hilt and gathering confidence from
the touch of that excellently balanced weapon, and he swung round even
as Fortunio and two of his braves appeared in the doorway.

CHAPTER XVII. HOW MONSIEUR DE GARNACHE LEFT CONDILLAC

Never was there a man with a better stomach for a fight than Martin de
Garnache, nor did he stop to consider that here his appetite in that
direction was likely to be indulged to a surfeit. The sight of those
three men opposing him, swords drawn and Fortunio armed in addition
with a dagger, drove from his mind every other thought, every other
consideration but that of the impending battle.

He fell on guard to receive their onslaught, his eyes alert, his lips
tight set, his knees like springs of steel, slightly flexed to support
his well-poised body.

But they paused a moment in the extremity of their surprise, and
Fortunio called to him in Italian to know the meaning of this attitude
of his as well as that of Marius, who lay huddled where he had fallen.

Garnache, reckless now, disdaining further subterfuge nor seeking to
have recourse to subtleties that could avail him nothing, retorted in
French with the announcement of his true name. At that, perceiving that
here was some deep treachery at work, they hesitated no longer.

Led by Fortunio they attacked him, and the din they made in the next few
minutes with their heavy breathing, their frequent oaths, their stamping
and springing this way and that, and, ringing above all, the clash and
clatter of sword on sword, filled the chamber and could be heard in the
courtyard below.

Minutes sped, yet they gained no advantage on this single man; not one,
but a dozen swords did he appear to wield, so rapid were his passes, so
ubiquitous his point. Had he but stood his ground there might have been
a speedy end to him, but he retreated slowly towards the door of the
antechamber. Valerie still stood there, watching with fearful eyes and
bated breath that tremendous struggle which at any moment she expected
to see terminate in the death of her only friend.

In her way she was helping Garnache, though she little realized it. The
six tapers in the candle-branch she held aloft afforded the only light
for that stormy scene, and that light was in the eyes of Garnache's
assailants, showing him their faces yet leaving his own in shadow.

He fell back steadily towards that door. He could not see it; but there
was not the need. He knew that it was in a direct line with the one
that opened upon the stairs, and by the latter he steered his backward
course. His aim was to gain the antechamber, although they guessed it
not, thinking that he did but retreat through inability to stand his
ground. His reasons were that here in this guardroom the best he could
do would be to put his back to the wall, where he might pick off one or
two before they made an end of him. The place was too bare to suit
his urgent, fearful need. Within the inner room there was furniture to
spare, with which he might contrive to hamper his opponents and give
them such a lusty fight as would live in the memory of those who might
survive it for as long as they should chance to live thereafter.

He had no thought of perishing himself, although, to any less concerned,
his death, sooner or later, must seem inevitable--the only possible
conclusion to this affray, taken as he was. His mind was concerned only
with this fight; his business to kill, and not himself to be slain. He
knew that presently others would come to support these three. Already,
perhaps, they were on their way, and he husbanded his strength against
their coming. He was proudly conscious of his own superior skill, for
he had studied the art of fence in Italy--its home--during his earlier
years, and there was no trick of sword-play with which he was not
acquainted, no ruse of service in a rough-and-tumble in which he was
unversed. He was proudly conscious, too, of his supple strength, his
endurance, and his great length of reach, and upon all these he counted
to help him make a decent fight.

Valerie, watching him, guessed his purpose to be the gaining of the
inner chamber, the crossing of the threshold on which she was standing.
She drew back a pace or two, almost mechanically, to give him room. The
movement went near to costing him his life. The light no longer falling
so pitilessly upon Fortunio's eyes, the captain saw more clearly than
hitherto, and shot a swift, deadly stroke straight at the region of
Garnache's heart. The Parisian leapt back when it was within an inch of
his breast; one of the bravoes followed up, springing a pace in advance
of his companions and lengthening his arm in a powerful lunge. Garnache
caught the blade almost on his hilt, and by the slightest turn of
the wrist made a simultaneous presentment of his point at the other's
outstretched throat. It took the fellow just above the Adam's apple, and
with a horrid, gurgling cry he sank, stretched as he still was in the
attitude of that murderous lunge that had proved fatal only to himself.

Garnache had come on guard again upon the instant. Yet in the briefest
of seconds during which his sword had been about its work of death,
Fortunio's rapier came at him a second time. He beat the blade aside
with his bare left hand and stopped with his point the rush of the
other bravo. Then he leapt back again, and his leap brought him to
the threshold of the anteroom. He retreated quickly a pace, and then
another. He was a sword's length within the chamber, and now he stood,
firm as a rock and engaged Fortunio's blade which had followed him
through the doorway. But he was more at his ease. The doorway was
narrow. Two men abreast could not beset him, since one must cumber the
movements of the other. If they came at him one at a time, he felt that
he could continue that fight till morning, should there still by then be
any left to face him.

A wild exultation took him, an insane desire to laugh. Surely
was sword-play the merriest game that was ever devised for man's
entertainment. He straightened his arm, and his steel went out like a
streak of lightning. But for the dagger on which he caught its edge,
the blade had assuredly pierced the captain's heart. And now, fighting
still, Garnache called to Valerie. He had need of her assistance to make
his preparations ere others came.

"Set down your tapers, mademoiselle," he bade her, "on the mantel shelf
at my back. Place the other candle branch there too."

Swiftly, yet with half-swimming senses, everything dim to her as to one
in a nightmare, she ran to do his bidding; and now the light placed so
at his back, gave him over his opponents the same slight advantage that
he had enjoyed before. In brisk tones he issued his fresh orders.

"Can you move the table, mademoiselle?" he asked her. "Try to drag it
here, to the wall on my left, as close to the door as you can bring it."

"I will try, monsieur," she panted through dry lips; and again she moved
to do his bidding. Quickened by the need there was, her limbs, which
awhile ago had seemed on the point of refusing their office, appeared to
gather more than ordinary strength. She was unconsciously sobbing in her
passionate anxiety to render him what help was possible. Frenziedly she
caught at the heavy oaken table, and began to drag it across the room as
Garnache had begged her. And now, Fortunio seeing what was toward, and
guessing Garnache's intentions, sought by a rush to force his way into
the Chamber. But Garnache was ready for him. There was a harsh grind of
steel on steel, culminating in a resounding rush, and Fortunio was back
in the guard-room, whither he had leapt to save his skin. A pause fell
at that, and Garnache lowered his point to rest his arm until they
should again come at him. From beyond the doorway the captain called
upon him to yield. He took the summons as an insult, and flew into a
momentary passion.

"Yield?" he roared. "Yield to you, you cut-throat scum? You shall have
my sword if you will come for it, but you shall have it in your throat."

Angered in his turn, Fortunio inclined his head to his companion's ear,
issuing an order. In obedience to it, it was the bravo now who advanced
and engaged Garnache. Suddenly he dropped on to his knees, and over his
head Garnache found his blade suddenly opposed by Fortunio's. It was a
clever trick, and it all but did Garnache's business then. Yet together
with the surprise of it there came to him the understanding of what was
intended. Under his guard the kneeling man's sword was to be thrust up
into his vitals. As a cry of alarm broke from mademoiselle, he leapt
aside and towards the wall, where he was covered from Fortunio's weapon,
and turning suddenly he passed his sword from side to side through the
body of the kneeling mercenary.

The whole thing he had performed mechanically, more by instinct than
by reason; and when it was done, and the tables were thus effectively
turned upon his assailants, he scarcely realized how he had accomplished
it.

The man's body cumbered now the doorway, and behind him Fortunio stood,
never daring to advance lest a thrust of that sword which he could not
see--Garnache still standing close against the wall--should serve him
likewise.

Garnache leaned there, in that friendly shelter, to breathe, and he
smiled grimly under cover of his mustache. So long as he had to deal
with a single assailant he saw no need to move from so excellent a
position. Close beside him, leaning heavily against the table she had
dragged thus far, stood Valerie, her face livid as death, her heart
sick within her at the horror inspired her by that thing lying on the
threshold. She could not take her eyes from the crimson stain that
spread slowly on the floor, coming from under that limply huddled mass
of arms and legs.

"Do not look, mademoiselle," Garnache implored her softly. "Be brave,
child; try to be brave."

She sought to brace her flagging courage, and by an effort she averted
her eyes from that horrid heap and fixed them upon Garnache's calm,
intrepid face. The sight of his quietly watchful eyes, his grimly
smiling lips, seemed to infuse courage into her anew.

"I have the table, monsieur," she told him. "I can bring it no nearer to
the wall."

He understood that this was not because her courage or her strength
might be exhausted, but because he now occupied the spot where he had
bidden her place it. He motioned her away, and when she had moved he
darted suddenly and swiftly aside and caught the table, his sword still
fast in his two first fingers, which he had locked over the quillons.
He had pushed its massive weight halfway across the door before Fortunio
grasped the situation. Instantly the captain sought to take advantage of
it, thinking to catch Garnache unawares. But no sooner did he show his
nose inside the doorpost than Garnache's sword flashed before his eyes,
driving him back with a bloody furrow in his cheek.

"Have a care, Monsieur le Capitaine," Garnache mocked him. "Had you come
an inch farther it might have been the death of you."

A clatter of steps sounded upon the stairs, and the Parisian bent once
more to his task, and thrust the table across the open doorway. He had a
moment's respite now, for Fortunio stung--though lightly--was not likely
to come again until he had others to support him. And while the others
came, while the hum of their voices rose higher, and finally their steps
clattered over the bare boards of the guard-room floor, Garnache had
caught up and flung a chair under the table to protect him from an
attack from below, while he had piled another on top to increase and
further strengthen the barricade.

Valerie watched him agonizedly, leaning now against the wall, her hands
pressed across her bosom, as if to keep down its tempestuous heaving.
Yet her anguish was tempered by a great wonder and a great admiration of
this man who could keep such calm eyes and such smiling lips in the face
of the dreadful odds by which he was beset, in the face of the certain
death that must ultimately reach him before he was many minutes older.
And in her imagination she conjured up a picture of him lying there torn
by their angry swords and drenched in blood, his life gone out of him,
his brave spirit, quenched for ever--and all for her unworthy sake.
Because she-- little, worthless thing that she was--would not marry
as they listed, this fine, chivalrous soul was to be driven from its
stalwart body.

An agony of grief took her now, and she fell once more to those awful
sobs that awhile ago had shaken her. She had refused to marry Marius
that Florimond's life should be spared, knowing that before Marius could
reach him she herself would have warned her betrothed. Yet even had that
circumstance not existed, she was sure that still she would have refused
to do the will of Marius. But equally sure was she that she would not so
refuse him were he now to offer as the price of her compliance the life
of Garnache, which she accounted irrevocably doomed.

Suddenly his steady, soothing voice penetrated her anguished musings.

"Calm yourself, mademoiselle; all is far from lost as yet."

She thought that he but spoke so to comfort her; she did not follow the
working of his warlike mind, concentrated entirely upon the business
of the moment, with little thought--or care, for that matter--for what
might betide anon. Yet she made an effort to repress her sobs. She
would be brave, if only to show herself worthy of the companionship and
friendship of so brave a man.

Across his barricade he peered into the outer room to ascertain with
what fresh opponents he might have to reckon, and he was surprised to
see but four men standing by Fortunio, whilst behind them among the
thicker shadows, he dimly made out a woman's figure and, beside her,
another man who was short and squat.

He bethought him that the hour, and the circumstance that most of the
mercenaries would be in their beds, accounted for the reinforcement not
being greater.

The woman moved forward, and he saw as he had suspected, that it was the
Dowager herself. The squat figure beside her, moving with her into the
shaft of light that fell from the doorway Garnache defended, revealed
to him the features of Monsieur de Tressan. If any doubt he had still
entertained concerning the Seneschal's loyalty, that doubt was now
dispelled.

And now the Dowager uttered a sudden cry of fear. She had caught sight
of the fallen Marius, and she hurried to his side. Tressan sped after
her and between them they raised the boy and helped him to a chair,
where he now sat, passing a heavy hand across his no doubt aching brow.
Clearly he was recovering, from which Garnache opined with regret that
his blow had been too light. The Dowager turned to Fortunio, who had
approached her, and her eyes seemed to take fire at something that he
told her.

"Garnache?" the Parisian heard her say, and he saw Fortunio jerk his
thumb in the direction of the barricade.

She appeared to forget her son; she stepped suddenly from his side, and
peered through the doorway at the stalwart figure of Garnache, dimly to
be seen through the pile of furniture that protected him to the height
of his breast. No word said she to the Parisian. She stood regarding him
a moment with lips compressed and a white, startled, angry face. Then:

"It was by Marius's contrivance that he was placed sentry over the
girl," he heard her tell Fortunio, and he thought she sneered.

She looked at the two bodies on the floor, one almost at her feet, the
other just inside the doorway, now almost hidden in the shadows of the
table. Then she issued her commands to the men, and fiercely she bade
them pull down that barricade and take the dog alive.

But before they could move to do her bidding, Garnache's voice rang
imperatively through the chamber.

"A word with you ere they begin, Monsieur de Tressan," he shouted, and
such was the note of command he assumed that the men stood arrested,
looking to the Dowager for fresh orders. Tressan changed colour, for
all that there was surely naught to fear, and he fingered his beard
perplexedly, looking to the Marquise for direction. She flashed him a
glance, lifted one shoulder disdainfully, and to the men:

"Fetch him out," said she, and she pointed to Garnache. But again
Garnache stayed them.

"Monsieur de Tressan," he called impressively, "to your dying day--and
that will be none so distant--shall you regret it if you do not hear
me."

The Seneschal was stirred by those words and the half-threat,
half-warning; they seemed to cover. He paused a moment, and this time
his eyes avoided the Marquise's. At last, taking a step forward,

"Knave," said he, "I do not know you."

"You know me well enough. You have heard my name. I am Martin Marie
Rigobert de Garnache, Her Majesty's emissary into Dauphiny to procure
the enlargement of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye from the Chateau de
Condillac, where she is detained by force and for the serving of
unscrupulous ends. Now you know me and my quality."

The Dowager stamped her foot.

"Fetch him out!" she commanded harshly.

"Hear me first, Monsieur le Seneschal, or it will be the worse for
you." And the Seneschal, moved by that confident promise of evil, threw
himself before the men-at-arms.

"A moment, I beseech you, Marquise," he cried, and the men, seeing his
earnestness and knowing his quality, stood undecided, buffeted as they
were between his will and the Marquise's. "What have you to say to me?"
Tressan demanded, seeking to render arrogant his tone.

"This: That my servant knows where I am, and that should I fail within a
very few days to come forth safe and sound from Condillac to rejoin
him, he is to ride to Paris with certain letters I have given him. Those
letters incriminate you to the full in this infamous matter here at
Condillac. I have set forth in them how you refused me help, how you
ignored the Queen's commands of which I was the bearer; and should it be
proved, in addition, that through your treachery and insubordination my
life has been lost, I promise you that nothing in all this world will
save you from a hanging."

"Never listen, monsieur," cried the Dowager, seeing Tressan start back
like a man in sudden fear. "It is no more than the ruse of a desperate
man."

"Heed me or not, at your choice," Garnache retorted, addressing himself
ever to Tressan. "You have had your warning. I little thought to see you
here to-night. But seeing you confirms my worst suspicions, and if I
am to die, I can die easy in my conscience at the thought that in
sacrificing you to Her Majesty's wrath I have certainly not sacrificed
an innocent man."

"Madame--" the Seneschal began, turning to the Dowager. But she broke in
impatiently upon his intended words, upon the prayer that bubbled to his
lips that she should pause a while ere she made an end of this Parisian.

"Monsieur," said she, "you may bargain with him when he is taken. We
will have him alive. Go in," she bade her men, her voice so resolute now
that none dared tarry longer. "Fetch the knave out--alive."

Garnache smiled at mademoiselle as the words were uttered.

"They want me alive," said he. "That is a hopeful state of things. Bear
up, child; I may need your help ere we are through."

"You shall find me ready, monsieur," she assured him for all her
tremors. He looked at the pale face, composed now by an effort of her
will, and at the beautiful hazel eyes which strove to meet his with calm
and to reflect his smile, and he marvelled at her courage as much as did
she at his.

Then the assault began, and he could have laughed at the way in which
a couple of those cut-throats--neither wishing to have the honour of
meeting him singly--hindered each other by seeking to attack him at
once.

At last the Dowager commanded one of them to go in. The fellow came,
and he was driven back by the sword that darted at him from above the
barricade.

There matters might have come to a deadlock, but that Fortunio came
forward with one of his men to repeat the tactics which had cost him
a life already. His fellow went down on his knees, and drove his sword
under the table and through the frame of the chair, seeking to prick
Garnache in the legs. Simultaneously the captain laid hold of an arm
of the chair above and sought to engage Garnache across it. The ruse
succeeded to the extent of compelling the Parisian to retreat. The table
seemed likely to be his undoing instead of helping him. He dropped like
lightning to one knee, seeking to force the fellow out from underneath.
But the obstacles which should have hindered his assailants hindered
Garnache even more at this juncture. In that instant Fortunio whipped
the chair from the table-top, and flung it forward. One of its legs
caught Garnache on the sword arm, deadening it for a second. The sword
fell from his hand, and Valerie shrieked aloud, thinking the battle
at an end. But the next moment he was on his feet, his rapier firmly
gripped once more, for all that his arm still felt a trifle numbed. As
seconds passed the numbness wore away, but before that had taken place
the table had been thrust forward, and the man beneath it had made it
impossible for Garnache to hinder this. Suddenly he called to Valerie.

"A cloak, mademoiselle! Get me a cloak!" he begged. And she, stemming
her fears once more, ran to do his bidding.

She caught up a cloak that lay on a chair by the door of her
bed-chamber, and brought it to him. He twisted it twice round his left
arm, letting its folds hang loose, and advanced again to try conclusions
with the gentleman underneath. He cast the garment so that it enmeshed
the sword when next it was advanced. Stepping briskly aside, he was up
to the table, and his busy blade drove back the man who assailed him
across it. He threw his weight against it, and thrust it back till it
was jammed hard once more against the doorposts, leaving the chair at
his very feet. The man beneath had recovered his sword by this, and
again he sought to use it. That was the end of him. Again Garnache
enmeshed it, kicked away the chair, or, rather, thrust it aside with his
foot, stooped suddenly, and driving his blade under the table felt it
sink into the body of his tormentor.

There was a groan and a spluttering cough, and then before Garnache
could recover he heard mademoiselle crying out to him to beware. The
table was thrust suddenly forward almost on top of him; its edge caught
his left shoulder, and sent him back a full yard, sprawling upon the
ground.

To rise again, gasping for air--for the fall had shaken him--was the
work of an instant. But in that instant Fortunio had thrust the table
clear of the doorway, and his men were pouring into the room.

They came at Garnache in a body, with wild shouts and fierce mockery,
and he hurriedly fell on guard and gave way before them until his
shoulders were against the wainscot and he had at least the assurance
that none could take him in the rear. Three blades engaged his own.
Fortunio had come no farther than the doorway, where he stood his torn
cheek drenched in blood, watching the scene the Marquise beside him, and
Tressan standing just behind them, very pale and scared.

Yet Garnache's first thought even in that moment of dire peril was for
Valerie. He would spare her the sight that must before many moments be
spread to view within that shambles.

"To your chamber, mademoiselle," he cried to her. "You hinder me," he
added by way of compelling her obedience. She did his bidding, but only
in part. No farther went she than the doorway of her room, where she
remained standing, watching the fray as earlier she had stood and
watched it from the door of the antechamber.

Suddenly she was moved by inspiration. He had gained an advantage
before, by retreating through a doorway into an inner room. Might he not
do the same again, and be in better case if he were to retreat now to
her own chamber? Impulsively she called to him.

"In here, Monsieur de Garnache. In here."

The Marquise looked across at her, and smiled in mockery. Garnache was
too well occupied, she thought, to attempt any such rashness. If he but
dared remove his shoulders from the wall there would be a speedier end
to him than as things were.

Not so, however, thought Garnache. The cloak twisted about his left
arm gave him some advantage, and he used it to the full. He flicked
the slack of it in the face of one, and followed it up by stabbing the
fellow in the stomach before he could recover guard, whilst with another
wave of that cloak he enmeshed the sword that shot readily into the
opening he had left.

Madame cursed, and Fortunio echoed her imprecations. The Seneschal
gasped, his fears lost in amazement at so much valour and dexterity.

Garnache swung away from the wall now, and set his back to mademoiselle,
determined to act upon her advice. But even in that moment he asked
himself for the first time since the commencement of that carnage--to
what purpose? His arms were growing heavy with fatigue, his mouth was
parched, and great beads of perspiration stood upon his brow. Soon he
would be spent, and they would not fail to take a very full advantage of
it.

Hitherto his mind had been taken up with the battle only, and if he
had thought of retreating, it was but to the end that he might gain a
position of some vantage. Now, conscious of his growing fatigue, his
thoughts turned them at last to the consideration of flight. Was there
no way out of it? Must he kill every man in Condillac before he could
hope to escape?

Whimsically, and almost mechanically, he set himself, in his mind,
to count the men. There were twenty mercenaries all told, excluding
Fortunio and himself. On Arsenio he might rely not to attack him,
perhaps even to come to his assistance at the finish. That left
nineteen. Four he had already either killed outright or effectively
disabled; so that fifteen remained him. The task of dealing with those
other fifteen was utterly beyond him. Presently, no doubt, the two now
opposing him would be reinforced by others. So that if any possible way
out existed, he had best set about finding it at once.

He wondered could he cut down these two, make an end of Fortunio, and,
running for it, attempt to escape through the postern before the rest of
the garrison had time to come up with him or guess his purpose. But the
notion was too wild, its accomplishment too impossible.

He was fighting now with his back to mademoiselle and his face to the
tall window, through the leaded panes of which he caught the distorted
shape of a crescent moon. Suddenly the idea came to him. Through that
window must lie his way. It was a good fifty feet above the moat, he
knew, and if he essayed to leap it, it must be an even chance that he
would be killed in leaping. But the chance of death was a certain one
if he tarried where he was until others came to support his present
opponents. And so he briskly determined upon the lesser risk.

He remembered that the window was nailed down, as it had remained since
mademoiselle's pretended attempt at flight. But surely that should prove
no formidable obstacle.

And now that his resolve was taken his tactics abruptly changed.
Hitherto he had been sparing of his movements, husbanding his strength
against the long battle that seemed promised him. Suddenly he assumed
the offensive where hitherto he had but acted in self-defence, and a
most deadly offensive was it. He plied his cloak, untwisting it from his
arm and flinging it over the head and body of one of his assailants, so
that he was enmeshed and blinded by it. Leaping to the fellow's flank,
Garnache, with a terrific kick, knocked his legs from under him so that
he fell heavily. Then, stooping suddenly, the Parisian ran his blade
under the other brave's guard and through the fellow's thigh. The man
cried out, staggered, and then went down utterly disabled.

One swift downward thrust Garnache made at the mass that wriggled
under his cloak. The activity of its wriggles increased in the next few
seconds, then ceased altogether.

Tressan felt wet from head to foot with a sweat provoked by horror of
what he saw. The Dowager's lips were pouring forth a horrid litany
of guard-room oaths, and meanwhile Garnache had swung round to meet
Fortunio, the last of all who had stood with him.

The captain came on boldly, armed with sword and dagger, and in that
moment, feeling himself spent, Garnache bitterly repented having
relinquished his cloak. Yet he made a stubborn fight, and whilst
they fenced and stamped about that room, Marius came to watch them,
staggering to his mother's side and leaning heavily upon Tressan's
shoulder. The Marquise turned to him, her face livid to the lips.

"That man must be the very fiend," Garnache heard her tell her son. "Run
for help, Tressan, or, God knows, he may escape us yet. Go for men, or
we shall have Fortunio killed as well. Bid them bring muskets."

Tressan, moving like one bereft of wits, went her errand, while the two
men fought on, stamping and panting, circling and lunging, their breath
coming in gasps, their swords grinding and clashing till sparks leapt
from them.

The dust rose up to envelop and almost choke them, and more than once
they slipped in the blood with which the floor was spattered, whilst
presently Garnache barely recovered and saved himself from stumbling
over the body of one of his victims against which his swiftly moving
feet had hurtled.

And the Dowager, who watched the conflict and who knew something of
sword-play, realized that, tired though Garnache might be, unless
help came soon or some strange chance gave the captain the advantage,
Fortunio would be laid low with the others.

His circling had brought the Parisian round, so that his back was now to
the window, his face to the door of the bedchamber, where mademoiselle
still watched in ever-growing horror. His right shoulder was in line
with the door of the antechamber, which madame occupied, and he never
saw her quit Marius's side and creep slyly into the room to speed
swiftly round behind him.

The only one from whom he thought that he might have cause to fear
treachery was the man whom he had dropped with a thigh wound, and he was
careful to keep beyond the reach of any sudden sword-thrust from that
fellow.

But if he did not see the woman's movements, mademoiselle saw them,
and the sight set her eyes dilating with a new fear. She guessed the
Dowager's treacherous purpose. And no sooner had she guessed it than,
with a choking sob, she told herself that what madame could do that
could she also.

Suddenly Garnache saw an opening; Fortunio's eyes, caught by the
Dowager's movements, strayed for a moment past his opponent, and the
thing would have been fatal to the captain but that in that moment,
as Garnache was on the point of lunging, he felt himself caught from
behind, his arms pinioned to his sides by a pair of slender ones that
twined themselves about him, and over his shoulder, the breath of it
fanning his hot cheek, came a vicious voice--

"Stab now, Fortunio!"

The captain asked nothing better. He raised his weary sword-arm and
brought his point to the level of Garnache's breast, but in that instant
its weight became leaden. Imitating the Marquise, Valerie had been in
time. She seized Fortunio's half-lifted arm and flung all her weight
upon it.

The captain cursed her horridly in a frenzy of fear, for he saw that
did Garnache shake off the Marquise there would be an end of himself. He
sought to wrench himself free of her detaining grasp, and the exertion
brought him down, weary as he was, and with her weight hanging to him.
He sank to his knees, and the girl, still clinging valiantly, sank with
him, calling to Garnache that she held the captain fast.

Putting forth all his remaining strength, the Parisian twisted from the
Dowager's encircling grasp and hurled her from him with a violence he
nowise intended.

"Yours, madame, are the first woman's arms that ever Martin de Garnache
has known," said he. "And never could embrace of beauty have been less
welcome."

Panting, he caught up one of the overturned chairs. Holding it by the
back he made for the window. He had dropped his sword, and he called
to mademoiselle to hold the captain yet an instant longer. He swung his
chair aloft and dashed it against the window. There was a thundering
crash of shivered glass and a cool draught of that November night came
to sweeten the air that had been fouled by the stamping of the fighters.

Again he swung up his chair and dashed it at the window, and yet again,
until no window remained, but a great, gaping opening with a fringe of
ragged glass and twisted leadwork.

In that moment Fortunio struggled to his feet, free of the girl, who
sank, almost in a swoon. He sprang towards Garnache. The Parisian turned
and flung his now shattered chair toward the advancing captain. It
dropped at his feet, and his flying shins struck against an edge of
it, bringing him, hurt and sprawling, to the ground. Before he could
recover, a figure was flying through the open gap that lately had been a
window.

Mademoiselle sat up and screamed.

"You will be killed, Monsieur de Garnache! Dear God, you will be
killed!" and the anguish in her voice was awful.

It was the last thing that reached the ears of Monsieur de Garnache as
he tumbled headlong through the darkness of the chill November night.

CHAPTER XVIII. IN THE MOAT

Fortunio and the Marquise reached the window side by side, and they were
in time to hear a dull splash in the waters fifty feet below them. There
was a cloud over the little sickle of moon, and to their eyes, fresh
from the blaze of candle-light, the darkness was impenetrable.

"He is in the moat," cried the Marquise excitedly, and Valerie, who sat
on the floor whither she had slipped when Fortunio shook her off, rocked
herself in an agony of fear.

To the horrors about her--the huddled bodies lying so still upon the
floor, the bloody footprints everywhere, the shattered furniture,
and the groans of the man with the wounded thigh--to all this she was
insensible. Garnache was dead, she told herself; he was surely dead; and
it seemed as if the very thought of it were killing, too, a part of her
own self.

Unconsciously she sobbed her fears aloud. "He is dead," she moaned; "he
is dead."

The Marquise overheard that piteous cry, and turned to survey the girl,
her brows lifting, her lips parting in an astonishment that for a second
effaced the horrors of that night. Suspicion spread like an oil stain
in her evil mind. She stepped forward and caught the girl by one of her
limp arms. Marius, paler than his stunning had left him, leaned more
heavily against the door-post, and looked on with bloodshot eyes.
If ever maiden avowed the secret of her heart, it seemed to him that
Valerie avowed it then.

The Marquise shook her angrily.

"What was he to you, girl? What was he to you?" she demanded shrilly.

And the girl, no more than half conscious of what she was saying, made
answer:

"The bravest gentleman, the noblest friend I have ever known."

Pah! The Dowager dropped her arm and turned to issue a command to
Fortunio. But already the fellow had departed. His concern was not with
women, but with the man who had escaped him. He must make certain that
the fall had killed Garnache.

Breathless and worn as he was, all spattered now with blood from the
scratch in his cheek, which lent him a terrific aspect, he dashed
from that shambles and across the guard-room. He snatched up a lighted
lantern that had been left in the doorway and leapt down the stairs
and into the courtyard. Here he came upon Monsieur de Tressan with a
half-dozen fellows at his heels, all more or less half clad, but all
very fully armed with swords and knives, and one or two with muskets.

Roughly, with little thought for the dignity of his high office, he
thrust the Lord Seneschal aside and turned the men. Some he ordered off
to the stables to get horses, for if Garnache had survived his leap and
swum the moat, they must give chase. Whatever betide, the Parisian must
not get away. He feared the consequences of that as much for himself as
for Condillac. Some five or six of the men he bade follow him, and never
pausing to answer any of Tressan's fearful questions, he sped across
the courtyard, through the kitchens--which was the nearest way--into the
outer quadrangle. Never pausing to draw breath, spent though he was, he
pursued his flight under the great archway of the keep and across the
drawbridge, the raising of which had been that night postponed to await
the Lord Seneschal's departure.

Here on the bridge he paused and turned in a frenzy to scream to his
followers that they should fetch more torches. Meanwhile he snatched the
only one at hand from the man-at-arms that carried it.

His men sprang into the guard-room of the keep, realizing from his
almost hysterical manner the urgent need for haste. And while he waited
for them, standing there on the bridge, his torch held high, he scanned
by its lurid red light the water as far as eye could reach on either
side of him.

There was a faint movement on the dark, oily surface for all that no
wind stirred. Not more than four or five minutes could have elapsed
since Garnache's leap, and it would seem as if the last ripple from the
disturbance of his plunge had not yet rolled itself out. But otherwise
there was nothing here, nor did Fortunio expect aught. The window of the
Northern Tower abutted on to the other side of the chateau, and it was
there he must look for traces of the fugitive or for his body.

"Hasten!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Follow me!" And without waiting
for them he ran across the bridge and darted round the building, his
torch scattering a shower of sparks behind him on the night, and sending
little rills of blood-red light down the sword which he still carried.

He gained the spot where Garnache must have fallen, and he stood below
the radiance that clove the night from the shattered window fifty feet
above, casting the light of his torch this way and that over the
black bosom of the moat. Not a ripple moved now upon that even, steely
surface. Voices sounded behind him, and with them a great glare of
ruddy light came to herald the arrival of his men. He turned to them and
pointed with his sword away from the chateau.

"Spread yourselves!" he shouted. "Make search yonder. He cannot have
gone far."

And they, but dimly realizing whom they sought, yet realizing that they
sought a man, dashed off and spread themselves as he had bidden them,
to search the stretch of meadowland, where ill must betide any fugitive,
since no cover offered.

Fortunio remained where he was at the edge of the moat. He stooped,
and waving his torch along the ground he moved to the far angle of the
chateau, examining the soft, oozy clay. It was impossible that a man
could have clambered out over that without leaving some impression. He
reached the corner and found the clay intact; at least, nowhere could
he discover a mark of hands or a footprint set as would be that of a man
emerging from the water.

He retraced his steps and went back until he had reached the eastern
angle of the chateau, yet always with the same result. He straightened
himself at last, and his manner was more calm; his frenzied haste was
gone, and deliberately he now raised his torch and let its light shine
again over the waters. He pondered them a moment, his dark eyes musing
almost regretfully.

"Drowned!" he said aloud, and sheathed his sword.

From the window overhead a voice hailed him. He looked up and saw the
Dowager, and, behind her, the figure of her son. Away in the meadows
the lights of his men's torches darted hither and thither like playful
jack-o'-lanterns.

"Have you got him, Fortunio?"

"Yes, madame," he answered with assurance. "You may have his body when
you will. He is underneath here." And he pointed to the water.

They appeared to take his word for it, for they questioned him no
further. The Marquise turned to mademoiselle, who was still sitting on
the floor.

"He is drowned, Valerie," she said slowly, watching the girl's face.

Valerie looked up. Her eyes were very wide, and her lips moved for a
second. Then she fell forward without a word. This last horror, treading
on the heels of all those that already had assailed her, proved too
great a strain for her brave spirit. She had swooned.

Tressan entered at that moment, full of questions as to what might be
toward, for he had understood nothing in the courtyard. The Marquise
called to him to help her with the girl, Marius being still too faint,
and between them they bore her to her chamber, laid her on the bed, and,
withdrawing, closed the door upon her. Then she signed to Marius and the
Seneschal.

"Come," she said; "let us go. The sight and smell of the place are
turning me sick, although my stomach is strong enough to endure most
horrors."

She took up one of the candle-branches to light them, and they went
below and made their way to the hall, where they found Marius's page,
Gaston, looking very pale and scared at the din that had filled the
chateau during the past half-hour or so. With him was Marius's hound,
which the poor boy had kept by him for company and protection in that
dreadful time.

The Marquise spoke to him kindly, and she stooped to pat the dog's
glossy head. Then she bade Gaston set wine for them, and when it was
fetched the three of them drank in brooding, gloomy silence.

The draught invigorated Marius, it cheered Tressan's drooping spirits,
and it quenched the Dowager's thirst. The Seneschal turned to her
again with his unanswered questions touching the end of that butchery
above-stairs. She told him what Fortunio had said that Garnache was
drowned as a consequence of his mad leap from the window.

Into Tressan's mind there sprang the memory of the thing Garnache had
promised should befall him in such a case. It drove the colour from his
cheeks and brought great lines of fearful care into sharp relief about
his mouth and eyes.

"Madame, we are ruined!" he groaned.

"Tressan," she answered him contemptuously, "you are chicken-hearted.
Listen to me. Did he not say that he had left his man behind him when he
came to Condillac? Where think you that he left his man?"

"Maybe in Grenoble," answered the Seneschal, staring.

"Find out," she told him impressively, her eyes on his, and calm as
though they had never looked upon such sights as that very night had
offered them. "If not in Grenoble, certainly, at least, somewhere in
this Dauphiny of which you are the King's Lord Seneschal. Turn the whole
province inside out, man, but find the fellow. Yours is the power to
do it. Do it, then, and you will have no consequences to fear. You have
seen the man?"

"Ay, I have seen him. I remember him; and his name, I bethink me, is
Rabecque."

He took courage; his face looked less dejected.

"You overlook nothing, madame," he murmured. "You are truly wonderful.
I will start the search this very night. My men are almost all at
Montelimar awaiting my commands. I'll dispatch a messenger with orders
that they are to spread themselves throughout Dauphiny upon this quest."

The door opened, and Fortunio entered. He was still unwashed and
terrible to look upon, all blood-bespattered. The sight of him drove a
shudder through Tressan. The Marquise grew solicitous.

"How is your wound, Fortunio?" was her first question.

He made a gesture that dismissed the matter.

"It is nothing. I am over full-blooded, and if I am scratched, I bleed,
without perceiving it, enough to drain another man."

"Here, drink, mon capitaine," she urged him, very friendly, filling
him a cup with her own hands. "And you, Marius?" she asked. "Are you
recovering strength?"

"I am well," answered Marius sullenly. His defeat that evening had
left him glum and morose. He felt that he had cut a sorry figure in the
affair, and his vanity was wounded. "I deplore I had so little share in
the fight," he muttered.

"The lustiest fight ever I or any man beheld," swore Fortunio. "Dieu!
But he was a fighter, that Monsieur de Garnache, and he deserved a
better end than drowning."

"You are quite sure that he is drowned?"

Fortunio replied by giving his reasons for that conclusion, and they
convinced both the Marquise and her son indeed they had never deemed
it possible that the Parisian could have survived that awful leap. The
Dowager looked at Marius, and from him to the captain.

"Do you think, you two, that you will be fit for tomorrow's business?"

"For myself," laughed Fortunio, "I am ready for it now."

"And I shall be when I have rested," answered Marius grimly.

"Then get you both to rest, you will be needing it," she bade them.

"And I, too, madame," said the Seneschal, bending over the hand she held
out to him. "Good-night to you all." He would have added a word to wish
them luck in the morrow's venture; but for the life of him he dared not.
He turned, made another of his bows, and rolled out of the room.

Five minutes later the drawbridge was being raised after his departure,
and Fortunio was issuing orders to the men he had recalled from their
futile search to go clear the guard-room and antechamber of the Northern
Tower, and to bear the dead to the chapel, which must serve as a
mortuary for the time. That done he went off to bed, and soon after the
lights were extinguished in Condillac; and save for Arsenio, who was, on
guard, sorely perturbed by all that had befallen and marvelling at the
rashness of his friend "Battista"--for he had no full particulars of the
business--the place was wrapped in sleep.

Had they been less sure that Garnache was drowned, maybe they had
slumbered less tranquilly that night at Condillac. Fortunio had been
shrewd in his conclusions, yet a trifle hasty; for whilst, as a matter
of fact, he was correct in assuming that the Parisian had not
crawled out of the moat--neither at the point he had searched, nor
elsewhere--yet was he utterly wrong to assume him at the bottom of it.

Garnache had gone through that window prepared to leap into
another--and, he hoped, a better world. He had spun round twice in the
air and shot feet foremost through the chill waters of the moat, and
down until his toes came in contact with a less yielding substance, yet
yielding nevertheless. Marvelling that he should have retained until now
his senses, he realized betimes that he was touching mud--that he was
really ankle deep in it. A vigorous, frantic kick with both legs at once
released him, and he felt himself slowly re-ascending to the surface.

It has been often said that a drowning man in his struggles sees his
whole life mirrored before him. In the instants of Garnache's ascent
through the half stagnant waters of that moat he had reviewed the entire
situation and determined upon the course he should pursue. When he
reached the surface, he must see to it that he broke it gently, for at
the window above were sure to be watchers, looking to see how he had
fared. Madame, he remembered, had sent Tressan for muskets. If he had
returned with them and they should perceive him from above, a bullet
would be sent to dispose of him, and it were a pity to be shot now after
having come through so much.

His head broke the surface and emerged into the chill darkness of the
night. He took a deep breath of cold but very welcome air, and moving
his arms gently under water, he swam quietly, not to the edge of the
moat but to the chateau wall, close under which he thought he would be
secure from observation. He found by good fortune a crevice between two
stones; he did not see it, his fingers found it for him as they groped
along that granite surface. He clung there a moment and pondered the
situation. He heard voices above, and looking up he saw the glare of
light through the opening he had battered.

And now he was surprised to feel new vigour running through him. He had
hurled himself from that window with scarce the power to leap, bathed in
perspiration and deeming his strength utterly spent. The ice-cold waters
of the moat had served, it would seem, to brace him, to wash away his
fatigue, and to renew his energies. His mind was singularly clear and
his senses rendered superacute, and he set himself to consider what he
had best do.

Swim to the edge of the moat and, clambering out, take to his legs was
naturally the first impulse. But, reflecting upon the open nature of the
ground, he realized that that must mean his ruin. Presently they would
come to see how he had fared, and failing to find him in the water they
would search the country round about. He set himself in their place. He
tried to think as they would think, the better that he might realize
how they would act, and then an idea came to him that might be worth
heeding. In any case his situation was still very desperate; on that
score he allowed himself no illusions. That they would take his drowning
for granted, and never come to satisfy themselves, he was not optimist
enough to assume.

He abandoned his grip of the wall and began to swim gently toward the
eastern angle. If they came out, they must lower the bridge; he would
place himself so that in falling it should cover him and screen him from
their sight. He rounded the angle of the building, and now the friendly
cloud that had hung across the moon moved by, and a faint, silver
radiance was upon the water under his eyes. But yonder, ahead of him,
something black lay athwart the moat. At once he knew it for the bridge.
It was down. And he had the explanation in that he remembered that the
Lord Seneschal had not yet left Condillac. It mattered little to him one
way or the other. The bridge was there, and he made the best of it.

A few swift, silent strokes brought him to it. He hesitated a moment
before venturing into the darkness underneath; then, bethinking him that
it was that or discovery, he passed under. He made for the wall, and as
he groped along he found a chain depending and reaching down into the
water. He caught at it with both hands and hung by it to await events.

And now, for the first time that night, his pulses really quickened.
There in the dark he waited, and the moments that sped seemed very long
to him, and they were very anxious. He had no good sword wherewith to
defend himself were he attacked, no good, solid ground on which to take
his stand. If he were discovered, he was helpless, at their mercy, to
shoot, or take, or beat to death as best they listed. And so he waited,
his pulses throbbing, his breath coming short and fast. The cold water
that had invigorated him some minutes ago was numbing him now, and
seemed to be freezing his courage as it froze the blood in his veins,
the very marrow in his bones.

Presently his ears caught a rush of feet, a sound of voices, and
Fortunio's raised above the others. Heavy steps rang on the bridge
over his head, and the thud of their fall was like thunder to the man
beneath. A crimson splash of light fell on the moat on either side of
him. The fellow on the bridge had halted. Then the steps went on. The
light flared this way and that, and Garnache almost trembled, expecting
at every moment that its rays would penetrate the spot where he was