uation. She loved him.

For Laure d'Aumenier to marry Marteau was impossible. The Marquis
would never consent. He was her legal guardian, the head of her race.
Marriage without his consent was unthinkable. Loving Marteau she would
fain not marry Yeovil; yet her troth being plighted in the most public
manner and with her consent, the Marquis would force her to keep her
word. She knew exactly the pressure that would be brought to bear upon
her. Although she had lost some of the pride of her ancestors, she
could see the situation from their point of view. There was a deadlock
before her and there appeared to be no way of breaking it.

It was a wild night outside. The rain beat upon the casement windows
of the old castle. The tempest without seemed fit accompaniment to the
tempest within, thought the woman.

A long time she lay thinking, planning, hoping, praying; alike
unavailingly. Toward morning, utterly exhausted by the violence of her
emotions, the scene she had gone through--and it had been a torture to
stand and receive the townspeople after the departure of Marteau--she
fell at last into a troubled sleep.

She was awakened by a slight sound, as of a light footstep. She
enjoyed the faculty of awakening with full command of her senses at
once. She parted the curtains of the bed. With her eyes wide open,
holding her breath, she listened. She heard soft movements. There was
someone in the room!

Laure d'Aumenier, as has been said, had been trained to self-reliance.
She could wield a sword expertly and was an accurate shot with a
firearm. She could ride with any woman in England. She had, in full,
the intrepidity and courage of her ancestors. Her prowess, so strange
and so unusual in that day in a woman, had been a subject of
disapproval on the part of her uncle, but Sir Gervaise Yeovil and his
son had viewed it with delight. Frank Yeovil had brought her from
Spain a beautiful Toledo blade and a pair of Spanish dueling pistols,
light, easily handled and of deadly accuracy. The blade hung from a
peg in the wall by the head of her bed. The pistols lay in a case on
the table upon which her lighted bedroom candle stood. They were
charged and ready for use.

Throwing back the cover without a sound, presently she stepped through
the hangings and out on the floor. A loose wrapper lay at the foot of
the bed, which was a tall old four-poster, heavily curtained. Whoever
was in the room was on the oth