"What did you mean when you said I could have given you no worse news than that of his coming alone?" she questioned suddenly.
"Madame," said he, "if this man comes without force, and you resist the orders of which he is the bearer, what think you will betide?"
"He will appeal to you for the men he needs that he may batter down my walls," she answered calmly.
He looked at her incredulously. "You realize it?" he ejaculated. "You realize it?"
"What is there in it that should puzzle a babe?"
Her callousness was like a gust of wind upon the living embers of his fears. It blew them into a blaze of wrath, sudden and terrific as that of such a man at bay could be. He advanced upon her with the rolling gait of the obese, his cheeks purple, his arms waving wildly, his dyed mustachios bristling.
"And what of me, madame?" he spluttered. "What of me? Am I to be ruined, gaoled, and hanged, maybe, for refusing him men?—for that is what is in your mind. Am I to make myself an outlaw? Am I, who have been Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny these fifteen years, to end my days in degradation in the cause of a woman's matrimonial projects for a simpering school-girl? Seigneur du Ciel!" he roared, "I think you are gone mad—mad, mad! over this affair. You would not think it too much to set the whole province in flames so that you could have your way with this wretched child. But, Ventregris! to ruin me—to—to—"
He fell silent for very want of words; just gaped and gasped, and then, with hands folded upon his paunch, he set himself to pace the chamber.
Madame de Condillac stood watching him, her face composed, her glance cold. She was like some stalwart oak, weathering with unshaken front a hurricane. When he had done, she moved away from the fireplace, and, beating her side gently with her whip, she stepped to the door.
"Au revoir, Monsieur de Tressan," said she, mighty cool, her back towards him.
At that he halted in his feverish stride, stood still and threw up his head. His anger went out, as a candle is extinguished by a puff of wind. And in its place a new fear crept into his heart.
"Madame, madame!" he cried. "Wait! Hear me."
She paused, half-turned, and looked at him over her shoulder, scorn in her glance, a sneer on her scarlet mouth, insolence in every line of her.
"I think, monsieur, that I have heard a little more than enough," said she. "I am assured, at least, that in you I have but a fair-weather friend, a poor lipserver."
"Ah, not that, madame," he cried, and his voice was stricken. "Say not that. I would serve you as would none other in all this world—you know it, Marquise; you know it."
She faced about, and confronted him, her smile a trifle broader, as if amusement were now blending with her scorn.
"It is easy to protest. Easy to say, 'I will die for you,' so long as the need for such a sacrifice be remote. But let me do no more than ask a favour, and it is, 'What of my good name, madame? What of my seneschalship? Am I to be gaoled or hanged to pleasure you?' Faugh!" she ended, with a toss of her splendid head. "The world is peopled with your kind, and I—alas! for a woman's intuitions—had held you different from the rest."
Her words were to his soul as a sword of fire might have been to his flesh. They scorched and shrivelled it. He saw himself as she would have him see himself—a mean, contemptible craven; a coward who made big talk in times of peace, but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she—dear God!—had thought him different from the ruck. She had held him in high esteem, and behold, how short had he not fallen of all her expectations! Shame and vanity combined to work a sudden, sharp revulsion in his feelings.
"Marquise," he cried, "you say no more than what is just. But punish me no further. I meant not what I said. I was beside myself. Let me atone—let my future actions make amends for that odious departure from my true self."
There was no scorn now in her smile; only an ineffable tenderness, beholding which he felt it in his heart to hang if need be that he might continue high in her regard. He sprang forward, and took the hand she extended to him.
"I knew, Tressan," said she, "that you were not yourself, and that when you bethought you of what you had said, my valiant, faithful friend would not desert me."
He stooped over her hand, and slobbered kisses upon her unresponsive glove.
"Madame," said he, "you may count upon me. This fellow out of Paris shall have no men from me, depend upon it."
She caught him by the shoulders, and held him so, before her. Her face was radiant, alluring; and her eyes dwelt on his with a kindness he had never seen there save in some wild daydream of his.
"I will not refuse a service you offer me so gallantly," said she. "It were an ill thing to wound you by so refusing it."
"Marquise," he cried, "it is as nothing to what I would do did the occasion serve. But when this thing 'tis done; when you have had your way with Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, and the nuptials shall have been celebrated, then—dare I hope—?"
He said no more in words, but his little blue eyes had an eloquence that left nothing to mere speech.
Their glances met, she holding him always at arm's length by that grip upon his shoulders, a grip that was firm and nervous.
In the Seneschal of Dauphiny, as she now gazed upon him, she beheld a very toad of a man, and the soul of her shuddered at the sight of him combining with the thing that he suggested. But her glance was steady and her lips maintained their smile, just as if that ugliness of his had been invested with some abstract beauty existing only to her gaze; a little colour crept into her cheeks, and red being the colour of love's livery, Tressan misread its meaning.
She nodded to him across the little distance of her outstretched arms, then smothered a laugh that drove him crazed with hope, and breaking from him she sped swiftly, shyly it almost seemed to him, to the door.
There she paused a moment looking back at him with a coyness that might have become a girl of half her years, yet which her splendid beauty saved from being unbecoming even in her.
One adorable smile she gave him, and before he could advance to hold the door for her, she had opened it and passed out.
CHAPTER II. MONSIEUR DE GARNACHE
To promise rashly, particularly where a woman is the suppliant, and afterwards, if not positively to repent the promise, at least to regret that one did not hedge it with a few conditions, is a proceeding not uncommon to youth. In a man of advanced age, such as Monsieur de Tressan, it never should have place; and, indeed, it seldom has, unless that man has come again under the sway of the influences by which youth, for good or ill, is governed.
Whilst the flush of his adoration was upon him, hot from the contact of her presence, he knew no repentance, found room in his mind for no regrets. He crossed to the window, and pressed his huge round face to the pane, in a futile effort to watch her mount and ride out of the courtyard with her little troop of attendants. Finding that he might not—the window being placed too high—gratify his wishes in that connection, he dropped into his chair, and sat in the fast-deepening gloom, reviewing, fondly here, hurriedly there, the interview that had but ended.
Thus night fell, and darkness settled down about him, relieved only by the red glow of the logs smouldering on the hearth. In the gloom inspiration visited him. He called for lights and Babylas. Both came, and he dispatched the lackey that lighted the tapers to summon Monsieur d'Aubran, the commander of the garrison of Grenoble.
In the interval before the soldier's coming he conferred with Babylas concerning what he had in mind, but he found his secretary singularly dull and unimaginative. So that, perforce, he must fall back upon himself. He sat glum and thoughtful, his mind in unproductive travail, until the captain was announced.