own, and the Dowager experienced
a faint stirring of surprise that she heard no flop such as must attend
the violent falling of so fat a body. But the next instant, realizing
the purpose of his absurd posture, she shrank back with a faint gasp,
and her face was mercifully blurred to his sight once more amid the
shadows of her chair. Thus was he spared the look of utter loathing, of
unconquerable, irrepressible disgust that leapt into her countenance.

His voice quivered with ridiculous emotion, his little fat red fingers
trembled as he outheld them in a theatrical gesture of supplication.

"Never contemplate poverty, madame, until you have discarded me," he
implored her. "Say but that you will, and you shall be lady of Tressan.
All that I have would prove but poor adornment to a beauty such as
yours, and I should shrink from offering it you, were it not that, with
it all, I can offer you the fondest heart in France. Marquise--Clotilde,
I cast myself humbly at your feet. Do with me as you will. I love you."

By an effort she crushed down her loathing of him--a loathing that grew
a hundredfold as she beheld him now transformed by his amorousness into
the semblance almost of a satyr--and listened to his foolish rantings.

As Marquise de Condillac it hurt her pride to listen and not have him
whipped for his audacity; as a woman it insulted her. Yet the Marquise
and the woman she alike repressed. She would give him no answer--she
could not, so near was she to fainting with disdain of him--yet must
she give him hope against the time when, should all else fail, she might
have to swallow the bitter draught he was now holding to her lips. So
she temporized.

She controlled her voice into a tone of gentle sadness; she set a mask
of sorrow upon her insolent face.

"Monsieur, monsieur," she sighed, and so far overcame her nausea as for
an instant to touch his hand in a little gesture of caress, "you must
not speak so to a widow of six months, nor must I listen."

The quivering grew in his hands and voice; but no longer did they shake
through fear of a rebuff: they trembled now in the eager strength of the
hope he gathered from her words. She was so beautiful, so peerless, so
noble, so proud--and he so utterly unworthy--that naught but her plight
had given him courage to utter his proposal. And she answered him in
such terms!

"You give me hope, Marquise? If I come again--?"

She sighed, and her face, which was once more wi