of the Chateau de Condillac sat the Dowager, her son,
and the Lord Seneschal, in conference.

It was early in the afternoon of the last Thursday in October, exactly a
week since Monsieur de Garnache all but broken-hearted at the failure of
his mission--had departed from Grenoble. They had dined, and the table
was still strewn with vessels and the fragments of their meal, for
the cloth had not yet been raised. But the three of them had left the
board--the Seneschal with all that reluctance with which he was wont to
part company with the table, no matter how perturbed in spirit he
might to--and they had come to group themselves about the great open
fireplace.

A shaft of pale October sunshine entering through the gules of an
escutcheon on the mullioned windows struck a scarlet light into silver
aid glass upon the forsaken board.

Madame was speaking. She was repeating words that she had uttered at
least twenty times a day during the past week.

"It was a madness to let that fellow go. Had we but put him and his
servant out of the way, we should be able now to sleep tranquil in our
beds. I know their ways at Court. They might have marvelled a little at
first that he should tarry so long upon his errand, that he should send
them no word of its progress; but presently, seeing him no more, he
would little by little have been forgotten, and with him the affair in
which the Queen has been so cursedly ready to meddle.

"As it is, the fellow will go back hot with the outrage put upon him;
there will be some fine talk of it in Paris; it will be spoken of as
treason, as defiance of the King's Majesty, as rebellion. The Parliament
may be moved to make outlaws of us, and the end of it all--who shall
foresee?"

"It is a long distance from Condillac to Paris, madame," said her son,
with a shrug.

"And you will find them none so ready to send soldiers all this way,
Marquise," the Seneschal comforted her.

"Bah! You make too sure of your security. You make too sure of what they
will do, what leave undone. Time will show, my friends; and, mor-dieu! I
am much at fault if you come not both to echo my regret that we did not
dispose of Monsieur de Garnache and his lackey when we had them in our
power."

Her eye fell with sinister promise upon Tressan, who shivered slightly
and spread his hands to the blaze, as though his shiver had been of
cold. But Marius did not so readily grow afraid.

"Madame," he said, "at the worst we can