nd be forgotten. If questions came to be asked later, Condillac would
know nothing of him.

"Monsieur de Garnache promised us some fine deeds on his own account,"
she mocked him. "We but afford him the opportunity to perform them. If
these be not enough for his exceeding valour, there are more men without
whom we can summon."

A feeling of pity for mademoiselle--perhaps of no more than decency--now
overcame Marius. He stepped forward.

"Valerie," he said, "it is not fitting you should remain."

"Aye, take her hence," the Dowager bade him, with a smile. "Her presence
is unmanning our fine Parisian."

Eager to do so, over-eager, Marius came forward, past his men-at-arms,
until he was but some three paces from the girl and just out of reach of
a sudden dart of Garnache's sword.

Softly, very warily, Garnache slipped his right foot a little farther to
the right. Suddenly he threw his weight upon it, so that he was clear of
the girl. Before they understood what he was about, the thing had taken
place. He had leaped forward, caught the young man by the breast of his
shimmering doublet, leaped back to shelter beyond mademoiselle, hurled
Marius to the ground, and planted his foot, shod as it was in his
thickly mudded riding-boot, full upon the boy's long, shapely neck.

"Move so much as a finger, my pretty fellow," he snapped at him, "and
I'll crush the life from you as from a toad."

There was a sudden forward movement on the part of the men; but if
Garnache was vicious, he was calm. Were he again to lose his temper now,
there would indeed be a speedy end to him. That much he knew, and kept
repeating to himself, lest he should be tempted to forget it.

"Back!" he bade them in a voice so imperative that they stopped, and
looked on with gaping mouths. "Back, or he perishes!" And dropping the
point of his sword, he lightly rested it upon the young man's breast.

In dismay they looked to the Dowager for instruction. She craned
forward, the smile gone from her lips, a horror in her eyes, her bosom
heaving. A moment ago she had smiled upon mademoiselle's outward signs
of fear; had mademoiselle been so minded, she might in her turn have
smiled now at the terror written large upon the Dowager's own face.
But her attention was all absorbed by the swiftly executed act by which
Garnache had gained at least a temporary advantage.

She had turned and looked at the strange spectacle of that dauntless
man, erect, his foot upon Ma