rs--an entire absence of
preference; her heart she could not give him--she did not have it. Yet
after her first prayer to the Spaniard and his overseer for deliverance,
to the secret surprise and chagrin of her young mistress, she simulated
content. It was artifice; she knew Agricola's power, and to seem to
consent was her one chance with him. He might thus be beguiled into
withdrawing his own consent. That failing, she had Mademoiselle's
promise to come to the rescue, which she could use at the last moment;
and that failing, there was a dirk in her bosom, for which a certain
hard breast was not too hard. Another element of safety, of which she
knew nothing, was a letter from the Cannes Brulee. The word had reached
there that love had conquered--that, despite all hard words, and rancor,
and positive injury, the Grandissime hand--the fairest of Grandissime
hands--was about to be laid into that of one who without much stretch
might be called a De Grapion; that there was, moreover, positive effort
being made to induce a restitution of old gaming-table spoils. Honore
and Mademoiselle, his sister, one on each side of the Atlantic, were
striving for this end. Don Jose sent this intelligence to his kinsman as
glad tidings (a lover never imagines there are two sides to that which
makes him happy), and, to add a touch of humor, told how Palmyre, also,
was given to the chieftain. The letter that came back to the young
Spaniard did not blame him so much: _he_ was ignorant of all the facts;
but a very formal one to Agricola begged to notify him that if Palmyre's
union with Bras-Coupe should be completed, as sure as there was a God in
heaven, the writer would have the life of the man who knowingly had thus
endeavored to dishonor one who _shared the blood of the De Grapions_.
Thereupon Agricola, contrary to his general character, began to drop
hints to Don Jose that the engagement of Bras-Coupe and Palmyre need not
be considered irreversible; but the don was not desirous of
disappointing his terrible pet. Palmyre, unluckily, played her game a
little too deeply. She thought the moment had come for herself to insist
on the match, and thus provoke Agricola to forbid it. To her
incalculable dismay she saw him a second time reconsider and
become silent.

The second person who did not fear Bras-Coupe was Mademoiselle. On one
of the giant's earliest visits to see Palmyre he obeyed the summons
which she brought him, to appear before the lady