ad in showy clothes of poor material
the worse for hard usage and spilt wine. The Countess bade him sit, and
with her own hands she poured a cup of Anjou for him.

In some wonder, and, for all his ordinary self-possession, with a little
awkwardness, the captain did her bidding, and with an apologetic air he
took the seat she offered him.

He drank this wine, and here was a spell of silence till Marius, grown
impatient, brutally put the thing for which the Marquise sought delicate
words.

"We have sent for you, Fortunio," said he, in a blustering tone, "to
inquire of you what price you'd ask to cut the throat of my brother, the
Marquis de Condillac."

The Seneschal sank back in his chair with a gasp. The captain, a frown
between his frank-seeming, wide-set eyes, started round to look at the
boy. The business was by no means too strong for the ruffler's stomach,
but the words in which it was conveyed to him most emphatically were.

"Monsieur de Condillac," said he, with an odd assumption of dignity, "I
think you have mistaken your man. I am a soldier, not a cut-throat."

"But yes," the Marquise soothed him, throwing herself instantly into the
breach, and laying a long, slender hand upon the frayed green velvet
of the captain's sleeve. "What my son means and what he says are vastly
different things."

"It will sorely tax your wits, madame," laughed Marius brutally, "to
make clear that difference."

And then the Seneschal nervously cleared his throat and muttering that
it waxed late and he must be riding home, made shift to rise. Him, too,
the Marquise at once subdued. She was not minded that he should go just
yet. It might be useful to her hereafter to have had him present at this
conference, into which she meant to draw him until she should have made
him one with them, a party to their guilt. For the task she needed not
over many words: just one or two and a melting glance or so, and the
rebellion in his bosom was quelled at once.

But with the captain her wiles were not so readily successful. He had no
hopes of winning her to wife--haply no desire, since he was not a man
of very great ambitions. On the other hand, he had against him the
very worst record in France, and for all that he might embark upon this
business under the auspices of the Lord Seneschal himself, he knew not
how far the Lord Seneschal might dare to go thereafter to save him from
a hanging, should it come to that.

He said as much in words.