hy, and clumsy only where he loved.

But in the despair that took him now the quality of his passion seemed
to change. Partly it was the wine, partly the sight of this other
lover--of whom there must be an end--whose very glance seemed to him an
insult to his mother. His imagination had taken fire that night, and it
had ripened him for any villainy. The Seneschal and the wine, between
them, had opened the floodgates of all that was evil in his nature, and
that evil thundered out in a great torrent that bid fair to sweep all
before it.

And suddenly, unexpectedly for the others, who were by now resigned to
his moody silence, the evil found expression. The Marquise had spoken
of something--something of slight importance--that must be done before
Florimond returned. Abruptly Marius swung round in his seat to face
his mother. "Must this Florimond return?" he asked, and for all that he
uttered no more words, so ample in their expression were those four that
he had uttered and the tone of them, that his meaning left little work
to the imagination.

Madame turned to stare at him, surprise ineffable in her glance--not
at the thing that he suggested, but at the abruptness with which the
suggestion came. The cynical, sneering tone rang in her ears after the
words were spoken, and she looked in his face for a confirmation of
their full purport.

She observed the wine-flush on his cheek, the wine-glitter in his eye,
and she remarked the slight smile on his lips and the cynical assumption
of nonchalance with which he fingered the jewel in his ear as he
returned her gaze. She beheld now in her son a man more purposeful than
she had ever known before.

A tense silence had followed his words, and the Lord Seneschal gaped
at him, some of the colour fading from his plethoric countenance,
suspecting as he did the true drift of Marius's suggestion. At last it
was madame who spoke--very softly, with a narrowing of the eyes.

"Call Fortunio," was all she said, but Marius understood full well the
purpose for which she would have Fortunio called.

With a half-smile he rose, and going to the door he bade his page who
was idling in the anteroom go summon the captain. Then he paced slowly
back, not to the place he had lately occupied at table, but to the
hearth, where he took his stand with his shoulders squared to the
overmantel.

Fortunio came, fair-haired and fresh-complexioned as a babe, his supple,
not ungraceful figure tawdrily cl