small teeth showing,
the threatening glance in the eyes.

"Of whom but one! Who else but your vile partner"--the young officer,
of noble race as he was, and steeped in good breeding, could scarce
refrain from being startled at those words--"the man you say you love?
Well, love him! Only learn this, you have nothing but his memory to
love. He is dead!----"

With a scream that rang not only through the _salon_, but the house
also, and penetrated out into the cool garden beyond--a scream that
caused the lieutenant to start toward them, and his men to peer into
the room--she sprang at him, her right hand raised now, and in it the
dagger she had so long concealed.

"Beware!" the officer cried. "Beware, she is dangerous!" And, even as
he spoke, she struck full at St. Georges's breast with the knife.

"Bah!" he exclaimed, thrusting aside her upraised arm with the hand in
which, all through the interview with her, he had held his
hat--thrusting it aside with such force that she almost staggered and
fell. "Bah! you mistake, woman. Did you think it was my _back_ again
at which you struck?"

The room was full of servants now; her own waiting maid and one or two
of the lackeys busy about the house, preparing a little supper madame
had intended giving that night to a few admirers, had rushed in at her
scream; and now the former stood behind and half supported her while
she muttered incoherent sounds amid which the words only could be
caught, "You slew him!--at last!"

"Nay," he said, standing still in front of her, calm and sinister;
"such satisfaction was not granted me, nor so easy an ending to him.
The English who drove Tourville's fleet to its doom at La Hogue did
their work effectively. Each ship, each transport, found by them was
blown out of the water; in one of those transports, named the Vendome,
he was blown up, too. I was there but a little while before it
exploded; I saw its fragments and all within it hurled into space. I
think, madame, my doom is scarce worse than his."

With another shriek, as piercing as the first, she threw her arms
above her head, then fell an insensible mass into the serving woman's
arms. And St. Georges, turning to the young officer, said:

"Sir, I am at your service."

* * * * *

They took him that night to the Chateau de Rambouillet, he marching
with three of the soldiers in front of and three behind him, the young
officer by his side. And this scion