To promise rashly, particularly where a woman is the suppliant, and afterwards, if not positively to repent the promise, at least to regret that one did not hedge it with a few conditions, is a proceeding not uncommon to youth. In a man of advanced age, such as Monsieur de Tressan, it never should have place; and, indeed, it seldom has, unless that man has come again under the sway of the influences by which youth, for good or ill, is governed.

Whilst the flush of his adoration was upon him, hot from the contact of her presence, he knew no repentance, found room in his mind for no regrets. He crossed to the window, and pressed his huge round face to the pane, in a futile effort to watch her mount and ride out of the courtyard with her little troop of attendants. Finding that he might not—the window being placed too high—gratify his wishes in that connection, he dropped into his chair, and sat in the fast-deepening gloom, reviewing, fondly here, hurriedly there, the interview that had but ended.

Thus night fell, and darkness settled down about him, relieved only by the red glow of the logs smouldering on the hearth. In the gloom inspiration visited him. He called for lights and Babylas. Both came, and he dispatched the lackey that lighted the tapers to summon Monsieur d’Aubran, the commander of the garrison of Grenoble.

In the interval before the soldier’s coming he conferred with Babylas concerning what he had in mind, but he found his secretary singularly dull and unimaginative. So that, perforce, he must fall back upon himself. He sat glum and thoughtful, his mind in unproductive travail, until the captain was announced.

Still without any definite plan, he blundered headlong, nevertheless, into the necessary first step towards the fulfilment of his purpose.

“Captain,” said he, looking mighty grave, “I have cause to believe that all is not as it should be in the hills in the district of Montelimar.”

“Is there trouble, monsieur?” inquired the captain, startled.

“Maybe there is, maybe there is not,” returned the Seneschal mysteriously. “You shall have your full orders in the morning. Meanwhile, make ready to repair to the neighbourhood of Montelimar to-morrow with a couple of hundred men.”

“A couple of hundred, monsieur!” exclaimed d’Aubran. “But that will be to empty Grenoble of soldiers.”

“What of it? We are not likely to require them here. Let your orders for preparation go round tonight, so that your knaves may be ready to set out betimes to-morrow. If you will be so good as to wait upon me early you shall have your instructions.”

Mystified, Monsieur d’Aubran departed on his errand, and my Lord Seneschal went down to supper well pleased with the cunning device by which he was to leave Grenoble without a garrison. It was an astute way of escape from the awkward situation into which his attachment to the interests of the dowager of Condillac was likely to place him.

But when the morning came he was less pleased with the idea, chiefly because he had been unable to invent any details that should lend it the necessary colour, and d’Aubran—worse luck—was an intelligent officer who might evince a pardonable but embarrassing curiosity. A leader of soldiers has a right to know something at least of the enterprise upon which he leads them. By morning, too, Tressan found that the intervening space of the night, since he had seen Madame de Condillac, had cooled his ardour very considerably.

He had reached the incipient stages of regret of his rash promise.

When Captain d’Aubran was announced to him, he bade them ask him to come again in an hour’s time. From mere regrets he was passing now, through dismay, into utter repentance of his promise. He sat in his study, at his littered writing-table, his head in his hands, a confusion of thoughts, a wild, frenzied striving after invention in his brain.

Thus Anselme found him when he thrust aside the portiere to announce that a Monsieur de Garnache, from Paris, was below, demanding to see the Lord Seneschal at once upon an affair of State.

Tressan’s flesh trembled and his heart fainted. Then, suddenly, desperately, he took his courage in both hands. He remembered who he was and what he was the King’s Lord Seneschal of the Province of Dauphiny. Throughout that province, from the Rhone to the Alps, his word was law, his name a terror to evildoers—and to some others besides. Was he to blench and tremble at the mention of the name of a Court lackey out of Paris, who brought him a message from the Queen-Regent? Body of God! not he.

He heaved himself to his feet, warmed and heartened by the thought; his eye sparkled, and there was a deeper flush than usual upon his cheek.

“Admit this Monsieur de Garnache,” said he with a fine loftiness, and in his heart he pondered what he would say and how he should say it; how he should stand, how move, and how look. His roving eye caught sight of his secretary. He remembered something—the cherished pose of being a man plunged fathoms-deep in business. Sharply he uttered his secretary’s name.

Babylas raised his pale face; he knew what was coming; it had come so many times before. But there was no vestige of a smile on his drooping lips, no gleam of amusement in his patient eye. He thrust aside the papers on which he was at work, and drew towards him a fresh sheet on which to pen the letter which, he knew by experience, Tressan was about to indite to the Queen-mother. For these purposes Her Majesty was Tressan’s only correspondent.

Then the door opened, the portiere was swept aside, and Anselme announced “Monsieur de Garnache.”

Tressan turned as the newcomer stepped briskly into the room, and bowed, hat in hand, its long crimson feather sweeping the ground, then straightened himself and permitted the Seneschal to take his measure.

Tressan beheld a man of a good height, broad to the waist and spare thence to the ground, who at first glance appeared to be mainly clad in leather. A buff jerkin fitted his body; below it there was a glimpse of wine-coloured trunks, and hose of a slightly deeper hue, which vanished immediately into a pair of huge thighboots of untanned leather. A leather swordbelt, gold-embroidered at the edges, carried a long steel-halted rapier in a leather scabbard chaped with steel. The sleeves of his doublet which protruded from his leather casing were of the same colour and material as his trunks. In one hand he carried his broad black hat with its crimson feather, in the other a little roll of parchment; and when he moved the creak of leather and jingle of his spurs made pleasant music for a martial spirit.

Above all, this man’s head, well set upon his shoulders, claimed some attention. His nose was hooked and rather large, his eyes were blue, bright as steel, and set a trifle wide. Above a thin-lapped, delicate mouth his reddish mustachios, slightly streaked with grey, stood out, bristling like a cat’s. His hair was darker—almost brown save at the temples, where age had faded it to an ashen colour. In general his aspect was one of rugged strength.

The Seneschal, measuring him with an adversary’s eye, misliked his looks. But he bowed urbanely, washing his hands in the air, and murmuring:

“Your servant, Monsieur de—?”

“Garnache,” came the other’s crisp, metallic voice, and the name had a sound as of an oath on his lips. “Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache. I come to you on an errand of Her Majesty’s, as this my warrant will apprise you.” And he proffered the paper he held, which Tressan accepted from his hand.

A change was visible in the wily Seneschal’s fat countenance. Its round expanse had expressed interrogation until now; but at the Parisian’s announcement that he was an emissary of the Queen’s, Tressan insinuated into it just that look of surprise and of increased deference which would have been natural had he not already been forewarned of Monsieur de Garnache’s mission and identity.

He placed a chair at his visitor’s disposal, himself resuming his seat at his writing-table, and unfolding the paper Garnache had given him. The newcomer seated himself, hitched his sword-belt round so that he could lean both hands upon the hilt, and sat, stiff and immovable, awaiting the Lord Seneschal’s pleasure. From his desk across the room the secretary, idly chewing the feathered end of his goose-quill, took silent stock of the man from Paris, and wondered.

Tressan folded the paper carefully, and returned it to its owner. It was no more than a formal credential, setting forth that Garnache was travelling into Dauphiny on a State affair, and commanding Monsieur de Tressan to give him every assistance he might require in the performance of his errand.

“Parfaitement,” purred the Lord Seneschal. “And now, monsieur, if you will communicate to me the nature of your affair, you shall find me entirely at your service.”

“It goes without saying that you are acquainted with the Chateau de Condillac?” began Garnache, plunging straight into business.

“Perfectly.” The Seneschal leaned back, and was concerned to feel his pulses throbbing a shade too quickly. But he controlled his features, and maintained a placid, bland expression.

“You are perhaps acquainted with its inhabitants?”

“Yes.”

“Intimate with them?”

The Seneschal pursed his lips, arched his brows, and slowly waved his podgy hands, a combination of grimace and gesture that said much or nothing. But reflecting that Monsieur de Tressan had a tongue, Garnache apparently did not opine it worth his while to set a strain upon his own imagination, for—

“Intimate with them?” he repeated, and this time there was a sharper note in his voice.

Tressan leaned forward and brought his finger-tips together. His voice was as urbane as it lay within its power to be.

“I understood that monsieur was proposing to state his business, not to question mine.”

Garnache sat back in his chair, and his eyes narrowed. He scented opposition, and the greatest stumbling-block in Garnache’s career had been that he could never learn to brook opposition from any man. That characteristic, evinced early in life, had all but been the ruin of him. He was a man of high intellectual gifts, of military skill and great resource; out of consideration for which had he been chosen by Marie de Medicis to come upon this errand. But he marred it all by a temper so ungovernable that in Paris there was current a byword, “Explosive as Garnache.”

Little did Tressan dream to what a cask of gunpowder he was applying the match of his smug pertness. Nor did Garnache let him dream it just yet. He controlled himself betimes, bethinking him that, after all, there might be some reason in what this fat fellow said.

“You misapprehend my purpose, sir,” said he, his lean brown hand stroking his long chin. “I but sought to learn how far already you may be informed of what is taking place up there, to the end that I may spare myself the pains of citing facts with which already you are acquainted. Still, monsieur, I am willing to proceed upon the lines which would appear to be more agreeable to yourself.

“This, then, is the sum of the affair that brings me: The late Marquis de Condillac left two sons. The elder, Florimond—who is the present marquis, and who has been and still continues absent, warring in Italy, since before his father’s death—is the stepson of the present Dowager, she being the mother of the younger son, Marius de Condillac.

“Should you observe me to be anywhere at error, I beg, monsieur, that you will have the complaisance to correct me.”

The Seneschal bowed gravely, and Monsieur de Garnache continued:

“Now this younger son—I believe that he is in his twenty-first year at present—has been something of a scapegrace.”

“A scapegrace? Bon Dieu, no. That is a harsh name to give him. A little indiscreet at times, a little rash, as is the way of youth.”

He would have said more, but the man from Paris was of no mind to waste time on quibbles.

“Very well,” he snapped, cutting in. “We will say, a little indiscreet. My errand is not concerned with Monsieur Marius’s morals or with his lack of them. These indiscretions which you belittle appear to have been enough to have estranged him from his father, a circumstance which but served the more to endear him to his mother. I am told that she is a very handsome woman, and that the boy favours her surprisingly.”

“Ah!” sighed the Seneschal in a rapture. “A beautiful woman—a noble, splendid woman.’

“Hum!” Garnache observed the ecstatic simper with a grim eye. Then he proceeded with his story.

“The late marquis possessed in his neighbour, the also deceased Monsieur de La Vauvraye, a very dear and valued friend. Monsieur de La Vauvraye had an only child, a daughter, to inherit his very considerable estates probably the wealthiest in all Dauphiny, so I am informed. It was the dearest wish of his heart to transform what had been a lifelong friendship in his own generation into a closer relationship in the next—a wish that found a very ready echo in the heart of Monsieur de Condillac. Florimond de Condillac was sixteen years of age at the time, and Valerie de La Vauvraye fourteen. For all their tender years, they were betrothed, and they grew up to love each other and to look forward to the consummation of the plans their fathers had laid for them.”

“Monsieur, monsieur,” the Seneschal protested, “how can you possibly infer so much? How can you say that they loved each other? What authority can you have for pretending to know what was in their inmost hearts?”

“The authority of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye,” was the unanswerable rejoinder. “I am telling you, more or less, what she herself wrote to the Queen.”

“Ah! Well, well—proceed, monsieur.”

“This marriage should render Florimond de Condillac the wealthiest and most powerful gentleman in Dauphiny—one of the wealthiest in France; and the idea of it pleased the old marquis, inasmuch as the disparity there would be between the worldly possessions of his two sons would serve to mark his disapproval of the younger. But before settling down, Florimond signified a desire to see the world, as was fit and proper and becoming in a young man who was later to assume such wide responsibilities. His father, realizing the wisdom of such a step, made but slight objection, and at the age of twenty Florimond set out for the Italian wars. Two years afterwards, a little over six months ago, his father died, and was followed to the grave some weeks later by Monsieur de La Vauvraye. The latter, with a want of foresight which has given rise to the present trouble, misjudging the character of the Dowager of Condillac, entrusted to her care his daughter Valerie pending Florimond’s return, when the nuptials would naturally be immediately celebrated. I am probably telling you no more than you already know. But you owe the infliction to your own unwillingness to answer my questions.”

“No, no, monsieur; I assure you that in what you say there is much that is entirely new to me.”

“I rejoice to hear it, Monsieur de Tressan,” said Garnache very seriously, “for had you been in possession of all these facts, Her Majesty might have a right to learn how it chanced that you had nowise interfered in what is toward at Condillac.

“But to proceed: Madame de Condillac and her precious Benjamin—this Marius—finding themselves, in Florimond’s absence, masters of the situation, have set about turning it to their own best advantage. Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, whilst being nominally under their guardianship, finds herself practically gaoled by them, and odious plans are set before her to marry Marius. Could the Dowager but accomplish this, it would seem that she would not only be assuring a future of ease and dignity for her son, but also be giving vent to all her pent-up hatred of her stepson.

“Mademoiselle, however, withstands them, and in this she is aided by a fortuitous circumstance which has arisen out of the overbearing arrogance that appears to be madame’s chief characteristic. Condillac after the marquis’s death had refused to pay tithes to Mother Church and has flouted and insulted the Bishop. This prelate, after finding remonstrance vain, has retorted by placing Condillac under an Interdict, depriving all within it of the benefit of clergy. Thus, they have been unable to find a priest to venture thither, so that even had they willed to marry mademoiselle by force to Marius, they lacked the actual means of doing so.

“Florimond continues absent. We have every reason to believe that he has been left in ignorance of his father’s death. Letters coming from him from time to time prove that he was alive and well at least until three months ago. A messenger has been dispatched to find him and urge him to return home at once. But pending his arrival the Queen has determined to take the necessary steps to ensure that Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye shall be released from her captivity, that she shall suffer no further molestation at the hands of Madame de Condillac and her son—enfin, that she shall run no further risks.

“My errand, monsieur, is to acquaint you with these facts, and to request you to proceed to Condillac and deliver thence Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, whom I am subsequently to escort to Paris and place under Her Majesty’s protection until such time as the new marquis shall return to claim her.”

Having concluded, Monsieur de Garnache sat back in his chair, and threw one leg over the other, fixing his eyes upon the Seneschal’s face and awaiting his reply.

On that gross countenance before him he saw fall the shadow of perplexity. Tressan was monstrous ill-at-ease, and his face lost a good deal of its habitual plethora of colour. He sought to temporize.

“Does it not occur to you, monsieur, that perhaps too much importance may have been attached to the word of this child—this Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye?”

“Does it occur to you that such has been the case, that she has overstated it?” counter-questioned Monsieur de Garnache.

“No, no. I do not say that. But—but—would it not be better—more—ah—satisfactory to all concerned, if you yourself were to go to Condillac, and deliver your message in person, demanding mademoiselle?”

The man from Paris looked at him a moment, then stood up suddenly, and shifted the carriages of his sword back to their normal position. His brows came together in a frown, from which the Seneschal argued that his suggestion was not well received.

“Monsieur,” said the Parisian very coldly, like a man who contains a rising anger, “let me tell you that this is the first time in my life that I have been concerned in anything that had to do with women and I am close upon forty years of age. The task, I can assure you, was little to my taste. I embarked upon it because, being a soldier and having received my orders, I was in the unfortunate position of being unable to help myself. But I intend, monsieur, to adhere rigidly to the letter of these commands. Already I have endured more than enough in the interests of this damsel. I have ridden from Paris, and that means close upon a week in the saddle—no little thing to a man who has acquired certain habits of life and developed a taste for certain minor comforts which he is very reluctant to forgo. I have fed and slept at inns, living on the worst of fares and sleeping on the hardest, and hardly the cleanest, of beds. Ventregris! Figure to yourself that last night we lay at Luzan, in the only inn the place contained—a hovel, Monsieur le Seneschal, a hovel in which I would not kennel a dog I loved.”

His face flushed, and his voice rose as he dwelt upon the things he had undergone.

“My servant and I slept in a dormitory’—a thousand devils! monsieur, in a dormitory! Do you realize it? We had for company a drunken vintner, a pedlar, a pilgrim on his way to Rome, and two peasant women; and they sent us to bed without candles, for modesty’s sake. I ask you to conceive my feelings in such a case as that. I could tell you more; but that as a sample of what I have undergone could scarcely be surpassed.”

“Truly-truly outrageous,” sympathized the Seneschal; yet he grinned.

“I ask you—have I not suffered inconvenience enough already in the service of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye that you can blame me if I refuse to go a single step further than my orders bid me?”

The Seneschal stared at him now in increasing dismay. Had his own interests been less at issue he could have indulged his mirth at the other’s fiery indignation at the inconveniences he recited. As it was, he had nothing to say; no thought or feeling other than what concerned finding a way of escape from the net that seemed to be closing in about him—how to seem to serve the Queen without turning against the Dowager of Condillac; how to seem to serve the Dowager without opposing the wishes of the Queen.

“A plague on the girl!” he growled, unconsciously uttering his thoughts aloud. “The devil take her!”

Garnache smiled grimly. “That is a bond of sympathy between us,” said he. “I have said those very words a hundred times—a thousand times, indeed—between Paris and Grenoble. Yet I scarcely see that you can damn her with as much justice as can I.

“But there, monsieur; all this is unprofitable. You have my message. I shall spend the day at Grenoble, and take a well-earned rest. By this time to-morrow I shall be ready to start upon my return journey. I shall have then the honour to wait upon you again, to the end that I may receive from you the charge of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. I shall count upon your having her here, in readiness to set out with me, by noon to-morrow.”

He bowed, with a flourish of his plumed hat, and would with that have taken his departure but that the Seneschal stayed him.

“Monsieur, monsieur,” he cried, in piteous affright, “you do not know the Dowager of Condillac.”

“Why, no. What of it?”

“What of it? Did you know her, you would understand that she is not the woman to be driven. I may order her in the Queen’s name to deliver up Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. But she will withstand me.”

“Withstand you?” echoed Garnache, frowning into the face of this fat man, who had risen also, brought to his feet by excitement. “Withstand you—you, the Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny? You are amusing yourself at my expense.”

“But I tell you that she will,” the other insisted in a passion. “You may look for the girl in vain tomorrow unless you go to Condillac yourself and take her.”

Garnache drew himself up and delivered his answer in a tone that was final.

“You are the governor of the province, monsieur, and in this matter you have in addition the Queen’s particular authority—nay, her commands are imposed upon you. Those commands, as interpreted by me, you will execute in the manner I have indicated.”

The Seneschal shrugged his shoulders, and chewed a second at his beard.

“It is an easy thing for you to tell me what to do. Tell me, rather, how to do it, how to overcome her opposition.”

“You are very sure of opposition—strangely sure, monsieur,” said Garnache, looking him between the eyes. “In any case, you have soldiers.”

“And so has she, and the strongest castle in southern France—to say nothing of the most cursed obstinacy in the world. What she says, she does.”

“And what the Queen says her loyal servants do,” was Garnache’s rejoinder, in a withering tone. “I think there is nothing more to be said, monsieur,” he added. “By this time to-morrow I shall expect to receive from you, here, the charge of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. A demain, donc, Monsieur le Seneschal.”

And with another bow the man from Paris drew himself erect, turned on his heel, and went jingling and creaking from the room.

The Lord Seneschal sank back in his chair, and wondered to himself whether to die might not prove an easy way out of the horrid situation into which chance and his ill-starred tenderness for the Dowager of Condillac had thrust him.

At his desk sat his secretary, who had been a witness of the interview, lost in wonder almost as great as the Seneschal’s own.

For an hour Tressan remained where he was, deep in thought and gnawing at his beard. Then with a sudden burst of passion, expressed in a round oath or two, he rose, and called for his horse that he might ride to Condillac.