" he said, "that I have no further rudeness to
offer any so that this lady is suffered to withdraw with me." And he
took in his own a hand that Ruth, amazed and unresisting, yielded up to
him. That touch of his seemed to drive out her fears and to restore her
confidence; the mortal terror in which she had been until his coming
dropped from her now. She was no longer alone and abandoned to the
vindictiveness of rude and violent men. She had beside her one in whom
experience had taught her to have faith.

Louis Duras, Marquis de Blanquefort, and Earl of Feversham, coughed with
mock discreetness under cover of his hand. "Ahem!"

He was a comely man with a long nose, good lowlidded eyes, a humorous
mouth, and a weak chin; at a glance he looked what he was, a weak,
good-natured sensualist. He was resplendent at the moment in a blue
satin dressing-gown stiff with gold lace, for he had been interrupted
by Blake's arrival in the very act of putting himself to bed, and his
head--divested of his wig--was bound up in a scarf of many colours.

At his side, the red-coated captain, arrested by the general's sardonic
cough, stood, a red-faced, freckled boy, looking to his superior for
orders.

"I t'ink you 'ave 'urt Sare Rowland," said Feversham composedly in his
bad English. "Who are you, sare?"

"This lady's husband," answered Wilding, whereupon the captain stared
and Feversham's brows went up in surprised amusement.

"So-ho! T'at true?" quoth the latter in a tone suggesting that it
explained everything to him. "T'is gif a differen' colour to your
story, Sare Rowlan'." Then he added in a chuckle, "Ho, ho--l'amour!" and
laughed outright.

Blake, gathering together his wits and his limbs at the same time, made
shift to rise.

"What a plague does their relationship matter?" he began. He would have
added more, but the Frenchman thought this question one that needed
answering.

"Parbleu!" he swore, his amusement rising. "It seem to matter
somet'ing."

"Damn me!" swore Blake, red in the face from pale that he had been. "Do
you conceive that if I had run away with his wife for her own sake I
had fetched her to you?" He lurched forward as he spoke, but kept his
distance from Wilding, who stood between Ruth and him.

Feversham bowed sardonically. "You are a such flatterer, Sare Rowlan',"
said he, laughter bubbling in his words.

Blake looked his scorn of this trivial Frenchman, who, upon scenting
what appeared to be the comed