thin the light, showed a
look of sad inquiry.

"If I thought that what you have said, you have said out of pity,
because you fear lest my necessities should hurt me, I could give you
no hope at all. I have my pride, mon ami. But if what you have said
you would still have said though I had continued mistress of Condillac,
then, Tressan, you may repeat it to me hereafter, at a season when I may
listen."

His joy welled up and overflowed in him as overflows a river in time of
spate.

He bent forward, caught her hand, and bore it to his lips.

"Clotilde!" he cried, in a smothered voice; then the door opened, and
Marius stepped into the long chamber.

At the creaking sound of the opening door the Seneschal bestirred
himself to rise. Even the very young care not so to be surprised,
how much less, then, a man well past the prime of life? He came up
laboriously--the more laboriously by virtue of his very efforts to show
himself still nimble in his mistress's eyes. Upon the intruder he turned
a crimson, furious face, perspiration gleaming like varnish on brow and
nose. At sight of Marius, who stood arrested, scowling villainously upon
the pair, the fire died suddenly from his glance.

"Ah, my dear Marius," said he, with a flourish and an air of being
mightily at his ease. But the young man's eyes went over and beyond him
to rest in a look of scrutiny upon his mother. She had risen too, and he
had been in time to see the startled manner of her rising. In her cheeks
there was a guilty flush, but her eyes boldly met and threw back her
son's regard.

Marius came slowly down the room, and no word was spoken. The Seneschal
cleared his throat with noisy nervousness. Madame stood hand on hip, the
flush fading slowly, her glance resuming its habitual lazy insolence. By
the fire Marius paused and kicked the logs into a blaze, regardless of
the delicate fabric of his rosetted shoes.

"Monsieur le Seneschal," said madame calmly, "came to see us in the
matter of the courier."

"Ah!" said Marius, with an insolent lifting of his brows and a sidelong
look at Tressan; and Tressan registered in his heart a vow that when he
should have come to wed the mother, he would not forget to take payment
for that glance from her pert son.

"Monsieur le Comte will remain and sup with us before riding back to
Grenoble," she added.

"Ah!" said he again, in the same tone. And that for the moment was all
he said. He remained by the fire, standing