In her apartments in the Northern Tower Valerie had supped, and—to spare Monsieur de Garnache the full indignity of that part of the offices he was charged with—she had herself removed the cloth and set the things in the guard-room, where they might lie till morning. When that was done—and despite her protests, Garnache had insisted upon lending a hand—the Parisian reminded her that it was already after nine, and urged her to make such preparations as incumbed her for their journey.

“My preparations are soon made,” she assured him with a smile. “I need but what I may carry in a cloak.”

They fell to talking of their impending flight, and they laughed together at the discomfiture that would be the Dowager’s and her son’s when, in the morning, they came to discover the empty cage. From that they passed on to talk of Valerie herself, of her earlier life at La Vauvraye, and later the conversation shifted to Garnache, and she questioned him touching the warring he had seen in early youth, and afterwards asked him for particulars of Paris—that wonderful city which to her mind was the only earthly parallel of Paradise—and of the life at Court.

Thus in intimate talk did they while away the time of waiting, and in the hour that sped they came, perhaps, to know more of each other than they had done hitherto. Intimate, indeed, had they unconsciously become already. Their singular position, locked together in that tower—a position utterly impossible under any but the conditions that attended it—had conduced to that good-fellowship, whilst the girl’s trust and dependence upon the man, the man’s observance of that trust, and his determination to show her that it had not been misplaced, had done the rest.

But to-night they seemed to have drawn nearer in spirit to each other, and that, maybe, it was that prompted Valerie to sigh, and in her sweet, unthinking innocence to say again:

“I am truly sorry, Monsieur de Garnache, that our sojourn here is coming to an end.”

He was no coxcomb, and he set no false value on the words. He laughed for answer, as he rejoined:

“Not so am I, mademoiselle. Nor shall I know peace of mind again until this ill-omened chateau is a good three leagues or so behind us. Sh! What was that?”

He came instantly to his feet, his face intent and serious. He had been sitting at his ease in an armchair, over the back of which he had tossed the baldric from which his sword depended. The clang of the heavy door below, striking the wall as it was pushed open, had reached his ears.

“Can it be time already?” asked mademoiselle; yet a panic took her, and she blenched a little.

He shook his head.

“Impossible,” said he; “it is not more than ten o’clock. Unless that fool Arsenio has blundered—” He stopped. “Sh!” he whispered. “Some one is coming here.”

And suddenly he realized the peril that might lie in being found thus in her company. It alarmed him more than did the visit itself, so unusual at this hour. He saw that he had not time to reach the guard-room; he would be caught in the act of coming forth, and that might be interpreted by the Dowager or her son—if it should happen to be one or the other of them—as a hurried act of flight such as guilt might prompt. Perhaps he exaggerated the risk; but their fortunes at Condillac had reached a point where they must not be jeopardized by any chance however slight.

“To your chamber, mademoiselle,” he whispered fearfully, and he pointed to the door of the inner room. “Lock yourself in. Quick! Sh!” And he signed frantically to her to go silently.

Swift and quietly as a mouse she glided from the room and softly closed the door of her chamber and turned the key in a lock, which Garnache had had the foresight to keep well oiled. He breathed more freely when it was done.

A step sounded in the guard-room. He sank without a rustle into the chair from which he had risen, rested his head against the back of it, closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and dissembled sleep.

The steps came swiftly across the guard-room floor, soft, as of one lightly shod; and Garnache wondered was it the mother or the son, just as he wondered what this ill-come visitor might be seeking.

The door of the antechamber was pushed gently open—it had stood ajar—and under the lintel appeared the slender figure of Marius, still in his brown velvet suit as Garnache last had seen him. He paused a moment to peer into the chamber. Then he stepped forward, frowning to behold “Battista” so cosily ensconced.

“Ola there!” he cried, and kicked the sentry’s outstretched legs, the more speedily to wake him. “Is this the watch you keep?”

Garnache opened his eyes and stared a second dully at the disturber of his feigned slumbers. Then, as if being more fully awakened he recognized his master, he heaved himself suddenly to his feet and bowed.

“Is this the watch you keep?” quoth Marius again, and Garnache, scanning the youth’s face with foolishly smiling eyes, noted the flush on his cheek, the odd glitter in his handsome eyes, and even caught a whiff of wine upon his breath. Alarm grew in Garnache’s mind, but his face maintained its foolish vacancy, its inane smile. He bowed again and, with a wave of the hands towards the inner chamber,

“La damigella a la,” said he.

For all that Marius had no Italian he understood the drift of the words, assisted as they were by the man’s expressive gesture. He sneered cruelly.

“It would be an ugly thing for you, my ugly friend, if she were not,” he answered. “Away with you. I shall call you when I need you.” And he pointed to the door.

Garnache experienced some dismay, some fear even. He plied his wits, and he determined that he had best seem to apprehend from his gestures Marius’s meaning; but apprehend it in part only, and go no further than the other side of that door.

He bowed, therefore, for the third time, and with another of his foolish grins he shuffled out of the chamber, pulling the door after him, so that Marius should not see how near at hand he stayed.

Marius, without further heeding him, stepped to mademoiselle’s door and rapped on a panel with brisk knuckles.

“Who is there?” she inquired from within.

“It is I—Marius. Open, I have something I must say to you.”

“Will it not keep till morning?”

“I shall be gone by then,” he answered impatiently, “and much depends upon my seeing you ere I go. So open. Come!”

There followed a pause, and Garnache in the outer room set his teeth and prayed she might not anger Marius. He must be handled skillfully, lest their flight should be frustrated at the last moment. He prayed, too, that there might be no need for his intervention. That would indeed be the end of all—a shipwreck within sight of harbour. He promised himself that he would not lightly intervene. For the rest this news of Marius’s intended departure filled him with a desire to know something of the journey on which he was bound:

Slowly mademoiselle’s door opened. White and timid she appeared.

“What do you want, Marius?”

“Now and always and above all things the sight of you, Valerie,” said he, and the flushed cheek, the glittering eye, and wine-laden breath were as plain to her as they had been to Garnache, and they filled her with a deeper terror. Nevertheless she came forth at his bidding.

“I see that you were not yet abed,” said he. “It is as well. We must have a talk.” He set a chair for her and begged her to be seated; then he perched himself on the table, his hands gripping the edges of it on either side of him, and he turned his eyes upon her.

“Valerie,” he said slowly, “the Marquis de Condillac, my brother, is at La Rochette.”

“He is coming home!” she cried, clasping her hands and feigning surprise in word and glance.

Marius shook his head and smiled grimly.

“No,” said he. “He is not coming home. That is—not unless you wish it.”

“Not unless I wish it? But naturally I wish it!”

“Then, Valerie, if you would have what you wish, so must I. If Florimond is ever to come to Condillac again, you must be my wife.”

He leaned towards her now, supported by his elbow, so that his face was close to hers, a deeper flush upon it, a brighter glitter in his black eyes, his vinous breath enveloping and suffocating her. She shrank back, her hands locking themselves one in the other till the knuckles showed white.

“What—what is it you mean?” she faltered.

“No more than I have said; no less. If you love him well enough to sacrifice yourself,” and his lips curled sardonically at the word, “then marry me and save him from his doom.”

“What doom?” Her voice came mechanically, her lips seeming scarce to move.

He swung down from the table and stood before her.

“I will tell you,” he said, in a voice very full of promise. “I love you, Valerie, above all else on earth or, I think, in heaven; and I’ll not yield you to him. Say ‘No’ to me now, and at daybreak I start for La Rochette to win you from him at point of sword.”

Despite her fears she could not repress a little smile of scorn.

“Is that all?” said she. “Why, if you are so rash, it is yourself, assuredly, will be slain.”

He smiled tranquilly at that reflection upon his courage and his skill.

“So might it befall if I went alone,” said he. She understood. Her eyes dilated with horror, with loathing of him. The angry words that sprang to her lips were not to be denied.

“You cur, you cowardly assassin!” she blazed at him. “I might have guessed that in some such cutthroat manner would your vaunt of winning me at the sword-point be accomplished.”

She watched the colour fade from his cheeks, and the ugly, livid hue that spread in its room to his very lips. Yet it did not daunt her. She was on her feet, confronting him ere he had time to speak again. Her eyes flashed, and her arm pointed quivering to the door.

“Go!” she bade him, her voice harsh for once. “Out of my sight! Go! Do your worst, so that you leave me. I’ll hold no traffic with you.”

“Will you not?” said he, through setting teeth, and suddenly he caught the wrist of that outstretched arm. But she saw nothing of immediate danger. The only danger that she knew was the danger that threatened Florimond, and little did that matter since at midnight she was to leave Condillac to reach La Rochette in time to warn her betrothed. The knowledge gave her confidence and an added courage.

“You have offered me your bargain,” she told him. “You have named your price and you have heard my refusal. Now go.”

“Not yet awhile,” said he, in a voice so odiously sweet that Garnache caught his breath.

He drew her towards him. Despite her wild struggles he held her fast against his breast. Do what she would, he rained his hot kisses on her face and hair, till at last, freeing a hand, she smote him with all her might across the face.

He let her go then. He fell back with an oath, a patch of fingermarks showing red on his white countenance.

“That blow has killed Florimond de Condillac,” he told her viciously. “He dies at noon to-morrow. Ponder it, my pretty.”

“I care not what you do so that you leave me,” she answered defiantly, restraining by a brave effort the tears of angry distress that welled up from her stricken heart. And no less stricken, no less angry was Garnache where he listened. It was by an effort that he had restrained himself from bursting in upon them when Marius had seized her. The reflection that were he to do so all would irretrievably be ruined alone had stayed him.

Marius eyed the girl a moment, his face distorted by the rage that was in him.

“By God!” he swore, “if I cannot have your love, I’ll give you cause enough to hate me.”

“Already have you done that most thoroughly,” said she. And Garnache cursed this pertness of hers which was serving to dare him on.

The next moment there broke from her a startled cry. Marius had seized her again and was crushing her frail body in his arms.

“I shall kiss your lips before I go, ma mie,” said he, his voice thick now with a passion that was not all of anger. And then, while he still struggled to have his way with her, a pair of arms took him about the waist like hoops of steel.

In his surprise he let her free, and in that moment he was swung back and round and cast a good six paces down the room.

He came to a standstill by the table, at which he clutched to save himself from falling, and turned bewildered, furious eyes upon “Battista,” by whom he now dimly realized that he had been assailed.

Garnache’s senses had all left him in that moment when Valerie had cried out. He cast discretion to the winds; reason went out of him, and only blind anger remained to drive him into immediate action. And as suddenly as that flood of rage had leaped, as suddenly did it ebb now that he found himself face to face with the outraged Condillac and began to understand the magnitude of the folly he had committed.

Everything was lost now, utterly and irretrievably—lost as a dozen other fine emprises had been by his sudden and ungoverned frenzy. God! What a fool he was! What a cursed, drivelling fool! What, after all, was a kiss or two, compared with all the evil that might now result from his interference? Haply Marius would have taken them and departed, and at midnight they would have been free to go from Condillac.

The future would not have been lacking in opportunities to seek out and kill Marius for that insult.

Why could he not have left the matter to the future? But now, with Florimond to be murdered on the morrow at La Rochette, himself likely to be murdered within the hour at Condillac, Valerie was at their mercy utterly.

Wildly and vainly did he strive even then to cover up the foolish thing that he had done. He bowed apologetically to Marius; he waved his hands and filled the air with Italian phrases, frenziedly uttered, as if by the very vigour of them he sought to drive explanation into his master’s brain. Marius watched and listened, but his rage nowise abated; it grew, instead, as if that farrago of a language he did not understand were but an added insult. An oath was all he uttered. Then he swung round and caught Garnache’s sword from the chair beside him, where it still rested, and Garnache in that moment cursed the oversight. Whipping the long, keen blade from its sheath, Marius bore down upon the rash meddler.

“Par Dieu!” he swore between his teeth. “We’ll see the colour of your dirty blood, you that lay hands upon a gentleman.”

But before he could send home the weapon, before Garnache could move to defend himself, Valerie had slipped between them. Marius looked into her white, determined face, and was smitten with surprise. What was this hind to her that she should interfere at the risk of taking the sword herself?

Then a slow smile spread upon his face. He was smarting still under her disdain and resistance, as well as under a certain sense of the discomfiture this fellow had put upon him. He saw a way to hurt her, to abase her pride, and cut her to the very soul with shame.

“You are singularly concerned in this man’s life,” said he, an odious undercurrent of meaning in his voice.

“I would not have you murder him,” she answered, “for doing no more than madame your mother bade him.”

“I make no doubt he has proved a very excellent guard,” he sneered.

Even now all might have been well. With that insult Marius might consider that he had taken payment for the discomfiture he had suffered. He might have bethought him that, perhaps, as she said, “Battista” had done no more than observe the orders he had received—a trifle excessively, maybe, yet faithfully nevertheless. Thinking thus, he might even have been content to go his ways and take his fill of vengeance by slaying Florimond upon the morrow. But Garnache’s rash temper, rising anew, tore that last flimsy chance to shreds.

The insult that mademoiselle might overlook might even not have fully understood—set him afire with indignation for her sake. He forgot his role, forgot even that he had no French.

“Mademoiselle,” he cried, and she gasped in her affright at this ruinous indiscretion, “I beg that you will stand aside.” His voice was low and threatening, but his words were woefully distinct.

“Par la mort Dieu!” swore Marius, taken utterly aback. “What may your name be—you who hitherto have had no French?”

Almost thrusting mademoiselle aside, Garnache stood out to face him, the flush of hot anger showing through the dye on his cheeks.

“My name,” said he, “is Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache, and my business now to make an end of one at least of this obscene brood of Condillac.”

And, without more ado, he caught up a chair and held it before him in readiness to receive the other’s onslaught.

But Marius hung back an instant—at first in sheer surprise, later in fear. He had some knowledge of the fellow’s methods. Even the sword he wielded gave him little confidence opposed to Garnache with a chair. He must have help. His eyes sought the door, measuring the distance. Ere he could reach it Garnache would cut him off. There was nothing for it but to attempt to drive the Parisian back. And so with a sudden rush he advanced to the attack. Garnache fell back and raised his chair, and in that instant mademoiselle once more intervened between them.

“Stand aside, mademoiselle,” cried Garnache, who now, grown cool, as was his way when once he was engaged, saw clearly through the purpose formed by Marius. “Stand aside, or we shall have him giving the alarm.”

He leapt clear of her to stop Marius’s sudden rush for the door. On the very threshold the young man was forced to turn and defend himself, lest his brains be dashed out by that ponderous weapon Garnache was handling with a rare facility. But the mischief was done, in that he had reached the threshold. Backing, he defended himself and gained the anteroom. Garnache followed, but the clumsy chair was defensive rather than offensive, and Marius’s sword meanwhile darted above it and below it, forcing him to keep a certain distance.

And now Marius raised his voice and shouted with all the power of his lungs:

“To me! To me! Fortunio! Abdon! To me, you dogs! I am beset.”

From the courtyard below rose an echo of his words, repeated in a shout by the sentinel, who had overheard them, and they caught the swift fall of the fellow’s feet as he ran for help. Furious, picturing to himself how the alarm would spread like a conflagration through the chateau, cursing his headstrong folly yet determined that Marius at least should not escape him, Garnache put forth his energies to hinder him from gaining the door that opened on to the stairs. From the doorway of the antechamber mademoiselle, with a white face and terrified eyes, watched the unequal combat and heard the shouts for help. Anon despair might whelm her at the thought of how they had lost their opportunity of escaping; but for the present she had no thought save for the life of that brave man who was defending himself with an unwieldy chair.

Garnache leapt suddenly aside to take his opponent in the flank and thus turn him from his backward progress towards the outer door. The manoeuvre succeeded, and gradually, always defending himself, Garnache circled farther round him until he was between Marius and the threshold.

And now there came a sound of running feet on the uneven stones of the courtyard. Light gleamed on the staircase, and breathless voices were wafted up to the two men. Garnache bethought him that his last hour was assuredly at hand. Well, if he must take his death, he might as well take it here upon Marius’s sword as upon another’s. So he would risk it for the sake of leaving upon Marius some token by which he might remember him. He swung his chair aloft, uncovering himself for a second. The young man’s sword darted in like a shaft of light. Nimbly Garnache stepped aside to avoid it, and moved nearer his opponent. Down crashed the chair, and down went Marius, stunned and bleeding, under its terrific blow. The sword clattered from his hand and rolled, with a pendulum-like movement, to the feet of Garnache.

The Parisian flung aside his chair and stooped to seize that very welcome blade. He rose, grasping the hilt and gathering confidence from the touch of that excellently balanced weapon, and he swung round even as Fortunio and two of his braves appeared in the doorway.