rt, "that if I killed
you, people would want to know the reason."

The patroon laughed. "How solicitous you are for her welfare--and
mine! Do you then measure skill only by inches? If so, I confess you
would stand a fair chance of despatching me. But your address? The St.
Charles, I presume." The soldier nodded curtly, and, having
accomplished his purpose, Mauville had turned to leave, when loud
voices, in a front box near the right aisle, attracted general
attention from those occupying that part of the grand stand. The young
officer who had accompanied Susan to the races was angrily confronting
a thick-set man, the latest recruit to her corps of willing captives.
The lad had assumed the arduous task of guarding the object of his
fancy from all comers, simply because she had been kind. And why
should she not have been?--he was only a boy--she was old enough to
be--well, an adviser! When, after a brief but pointed altercation, he
flung himself away with a last reproachful look in the direction of
his enslaver, Susan looked hurt. That was her reward for being nice to
a child!

"A fractious young cub!" said the thick-set man, complacently.

"Well, I like cubs better than bears!" retorted Susan, pointedly.

Not long, however, could the interest of the spectators be diverted
from the amusement of the day and soon all eyes were drawn once more
to the track where the horses' hoofs resounded with exciting patter,
as they struggled toward the wire, urged by the stimulating voices of
the jockeys.

But even when Leduc won the race, beating the best heat on record;
when the ladies in the grand stand arose in a body, like a thousand
butterflies, disturbed by a sudden footfall in a sunlit field; when
the jockey became the hero of the hour; when the small boys outside
nearly fell from the trees in their exuberance of ecstasy, and the men
threw their hats in the air and shouted themselves hoarse--even these
exhilarating circumstances failed to reawaken the land baron's concern
in the scene around him. His efforts at indifference were chafing his
inmost being; the cloak of _insouciance_ was stifling him; the
primeval man was struggling for expression, that brute-like rage whose
only limits are its own fury and violence.

A quavering voice, near at hand, recalled him to himself, and turning,
he beheld the marquis approaching with mincing manner, the paint and
pigments cracked by the artificial smiles wreathing his wrinkled face.