ready. Something might yet chance to aid me, and in the mean
while I might spoil all did I yield to this dread of the morrow. By an
effort I mastered myself, and in tones calm and level, that betrayed
nothing of the tempest in my soul--

"It is not welcome, mademoiselle," I answered. "I have excellent reasons
for not desiring to meet Monsieur de Marsac."

"Excellent, indeed, are they!" lisped Saint-Eustache, with an ugly droop
at the corners of his mouth. "I doubt not you'll find it hard to offer
a plausible reason for having left him and his sister without news that
you were alive."

"Monsieur," said I at random, "why will you drag in his sister's name?"

"Why?" he echoed, and he eyed me with undisguised amusement. He was
standing erect, his head thrown back, his right arm outstretched from
the shoulder, and his hand resting lightly upon the gold mount of his
beribboned cane. He let his eyes wander from me to Roxalanne, then back
again to me. At last: "Is it wonderful that I should drag in the name of
your betrothed?" said he. "But perhaps you will deny that Mademoiselle
de Marsac is that to you?" he suggested.

And I, forgetting for the moment the part I played and the man whose
identity I had put on, made answer hotly: "I do deny it."

"Why, then, you lie," said he, and shrugged hits shoulders with insolent
contempt.

In all my life I do not think it could be said of me that I had ever
given way to rage. Rude, untutored minds may fall a prey to passion,
but a gentleman, I hold, is never angry. Nor was I then, so far as the
outward signs of anger count. I doffed my hat with a sweep to Roxalanne,
who stood by with fear and wonder blending in her glance.

"Mademoiselle, you will forgive that I find it necessary to birch this
babbling schoolboy in your presence."

Then, with the pleasantest manner in the world, I stepped aside, and
plucked the cane from the Chevalier's hand before he had so much as
guessed what I was about. I bowed before him with the utmost politeness,
as if craving his leave and tolerance for what I was about to do, and
then, before he had recovered from his astonishment, I had laid that
cane three times in quick succession across his shoulders. With a cry at
once of pain and of mortification, he sprang back, and his hand dropped
to his hilt.

"Monsieur," Roxalanne cried to him, "do you not see that he is unarmed?"

But he saw nothing, or, if he saw, thanked Heaven that things were in
such