f coming forth, and that might be
interpreted by the Dowager or her son--if it should happen to be one
or the other of them--as a hurried act of flight such as guilt might
prompt. Perhaps he exaggerated the risk; but their fortunes at Condillac
had reached a point where they must not be jeopardized by any chance
however slight.

"To your chamber, mademoiselle," he whispered fearfully, and he pointed
to the door of the inner room. "Lock yourself in. Quick! Sh!" And he
signed frantically to her to go silently.

Swift and quietly as a mouse she glided from the room and softly closed
the door of her chamber and turned the key in a lock, which Garnache had
had the foresight to keep well oiled. He breathed more freely when it
was done.

A step sounded in the guard-room. He sank without a rustle into the
chair from which he had risen, rested his head against the back of it,
closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and dissembled sleep.

The steps came swiftly across the guard-room floor, soft, as of one
lightly shod; and Garnache wondered was it the mother or the son, just
as he wondered what this ill-come visitor might be seeking.

The door of the antechamber was pushed gently open it had stood
ajar--and under the lintel appeared the slender figure of Marius, still
in his brown velvet suit as Garnache last had seen him. He paused a
moment to peer into the chamber. Then he stepped forward, frowning to
behold "Battista" so cosily ensconced.

"Ola there!" he cried, and kicked the sentry's outstretched legs, the
more speedily to wake him. "Is this the watch you keep?"

Garnache opened his eyes and stared a second dully at the disturber
of his feigned slumbers. Then, as if being more fully awakened he
recognized his master, he heaved himself suddenly to his feet and bowed.

"Is this the watch you keep?" quoth Marius again, and Garnache, scanning
the youth's face with foolishly smiling eyes, noted the flush on his
cheek, the odd glitter in his handsome eyes, and even caught a whiff
of wine upon his breath. Alarm grew in Garnache's mind, but his face
maintained its foolish vacancy, its inane smile. He bowed again and,
with a wave of the hands towards the inner chamber,

"La damigella a la," said he.

For all that Marius had no Italian he understood the drift of the
words, assisted as they were by the man's expressive gesture. He sneered
cruelly.

"It would be an ugly thing for you, my ugly friend, if she were not,"
he answer