ater when disillusionment follows his present
youthful ardour. Make each other happy, then," and he waved his arms
from one to the other. "Our good Father, here, will tie the knot at
once, and then, my Lord Seneschal, you may bear home your bride. Her son
shall follow you."

But the Marquise blazed out now. She stamped her foot, and her eyes
seemed to have taken fire.

"Never, sir! Never in life!" she cried. "I will not be so constrained. I
am the Marquise de Condillac, monsieur. Do not forget it!"

"I am hardly in danger of doing that. It is because I remember it that
I urge you to change your estate with all dispatch; and cease to be the
Marquise de Condillac. That same Marquise has a heavy score against
her. Let her evade payment by this metamorphosis. I have opened for you,
madame, a door through which you may escape."

"You are insolent," she told him. "By God, sir! I am no baggage to be
disposed of by the will of any man."

At that Garnache himself took fire. Her anger proved as the steel
smiting the flint of his own nature, and one of his fierce bursts of
blazing passion whirled about her head.

"And what of this child, here?" he thundered. "What of her, madame? Was
she a baggage to be disposed of by the will of any man or woman? Yet you
sought to dispose of her against her heart, against her nature, against
her plighted word. Enough said!" he barked, and so terrific was his mien
and voice that the stout-spirited Dowager was cowed, and recoiled as he
advanced a step in her direction. "Get you married. Take you this man
to husband, you who with such calmness sought to drive others into
unwilling wedlock. Do it, madame, and do it now, or by the Heaven above
us, you shall come to Paris with me, and you'll not find them nice
there. It will avail you little to storm and shout at them that you are
Marquise de Condillac. As a murderess and a rebel shall you be tried,
and as both or either it is odds you will be broken on the wheel--and
your son with you. So make your choice, madame."

He ceased. Valerie had caught him by the arm. At once his fury fell from
him. He turned to her.

"What is it, child?"

"Do not compel her, if she will not wed him," said she. "I
know--and--she did not--how terrible a thing it is."

"Nay, patience, child," he soothed her, smiling now, his smile as the
sunshine that succeeds a thunderstorm.

"It is none so bad with her. She is but coy. They had plighted their
troth already, so