s 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 i