estilence blight them all! There are still the
lands of La Vauvraye to lose. The only true end to our troubles as they
stand at present lies in your marrying this headstrong baggage."

"That the step should be rendered impossible, you can but blame
yourself," Marius reminded her.

"How so?" she cried, turning sharply upon him.

"Had you kept friends with the Church, had you paid tithes and saved
us from this cursed Interdict, we should have no difficulty in getting
hither a priest, and settling the matter out of hand, be Valerie willing
or not."

She looked at him, scorn kindling in her glance. Then she swung round to
appeal to Tressan.

"You hear him, Count," said she. "There is a lover for you! He would wed
his mistress whether she love him or not--and he has sworn to me that he
loves the girl."

"How else should the thing be done since she opposes it?" asked Marius,
sulkily.

"How else? Do you ask me how else? God! Were I a man, and had I your
shape and face, there is no woman in the world should withstand me if
I set my heart on her. It is address you lack. You are clumsy as a lout
where a woman is concerned. Were I in your place, I had taken her by
storm three months ago, when first she came to us. I had carried her out
of Condillac, out of France, over the border into Savoy, where there are
no Interdicts to plague you, and there I would have married her."

Marius frowned darkly, but before he could speak, Tressan was
insinuating a compliment to the Marquise.

"True, Marius," he said, with pursed lips. "Nature has been very good to
you in that she has made you the very counterpart of your lady mother.
You are as comely a gentleman as is to be found in France--or out of
it."

"Pish!" snapped Marius, too angered by the reflection cast upon his
address, to be flattered by their praises of his beauty. "It is an easy
thing to talk; an easy thing to set up arguments when we consider but
the half of a question. You forget, madame, that Valerie is betrothed to
Florimond and that she clings faithfully to her betrothal."

"Vertudieu!" swore the Marquise, "and what is this betrothal, what this
faithfulness? She has not seen her betrothed for three years. She was
a child at the time of their fiancailles. Think you her faithfulness to
him is the constancy of a woman to her lover? Go your ways, you foolish
boy. It is but the constancy to a word, to the wishes of her father.
Think you constancy that has no other bas