tly turmoil of a few
moments before had changed the luck. Then passing into the adjoining
drawing-room, he managed to make his escape unobserved. "Where is
madame?" he inquired of the first servant he met.

"In the little sitting-room."

"Alone?"

"No; a young gentleman is with her."

The baron no longer doubted the correctness of his conjectures, and his
disquietude increased. Quickly, and as if he had been in his own house,
he hastened to the door of the little sitting-room and listened. At that
moment rage was imparting a truly frightful intonation to M. Wilkie's
voice. The baron really felt alarmed. He stooped, applied his eye to the
keyhole, and seeing M. Wilkie with his hand uplifted, he burst open the
door and went in. He arrived only just in time to fell Wilkie to
the floor, and save Madame d'Argeles from that most terrible of
humiliations: the degradation of being struck by her own son. "Ah, you
rascal!" cried the worthy baron, transported with indignation, "you
beggarly rascal! you brigand! Is this the way you treat an unfortunate
woman who has sacrificed herself for you--your mother? You try to strike
your mother, when you ought to kiss her very footprints!"

As livid as if his blood had been suddenly turned to gall--with
quivering lips and eyes starting from their sockets--M. Wilkie rose,
with difficulty, to his feet, at the same time rubbing his left elbow
which had struck against the corner of a piece of furniture, in his
fall. "Scoundrel! You brutal scoundrel!" he growled, ferociously. And
then, retreating a step: "Who gave you permission to come in here?" he
added. "Who are you? By what right do you meddle with my affairs?"

"By the right that every honest man possesses to chastise a cowardly
rascal."

M. Wilkie shook his fist at the baron. "You are a coward yourself," he
retorted. "You had better learn who you are talking to! You must mend
your manners a little, you old----"

The word he uttered was so vile that no man could fail to resent it,
much less the baron, who was already frantic with passion. His faced
turned as purple as if he were stricken with apoplexy, and such furious
rage gleamed in his eyes that Madame d'Argeles was frightened. She
feared she should see her son butchered before her very eyes, and
she extended her arms as if to protect him. "Jacques," she said
beseechingly, "Jacques!"

This was the name which was indelibly impressed upon Wilkie's
memory--the name he had heard