e than that would stand between
her and any man who--as you might do, had you the address--could make
her love him?"

"I do say so," answered Marius firmly.

She smiled the pitying smile of one equipped with superior knowledge
when confronted with an obstinate, uninformed mind.

"There is a droll arrogance about you, Marius," she told him, quietly.
"You, a fledgling, would teach me, a woman, the ways of a woman's heart!
It is a thing you may live to regret."

"As how?" he asked.

"Once already has mademoiselle contrived to corrupt one of our men,
and send him to Paris with a letter. Out of that has sprung our present
trouble. Another time she may do better. When she shall have bribed
another to assist her to escape; when she, herself, shall have made
off to the shelter of the Queen-mother, perhaps you will regret that my
counsel should have fallen upon barren ground."

"It is to prevent any such attempt that we have placed her under guard,"
said he. "You are forgetting that."

"Forgetting it? Not I. But what assurance have you that she will not
bribe her guard?"

Marius laughed, rose, and pushed back his chair.

"Madame," said he, "you are back at your contemplation of the worst side
of this affair; you are persisting in considering only how we may be
thwarted. But set your mind at rest. Gilles is her sentinel. Every night
he sleeps in her anteroom. He is Fortunio's most trusted man. She will
not corrupt him."

The Dowager smiled pensively, her eyes upon the fire. Suddenly she
raised them to his face. "Berthaud was none the less trusted. Yet, with
no more than a promise of reward at some future time should she succeed
in escaping from us, did she bribe him to carry her letter to the Queen.
What happened to Berthaud that may not happen to Gilles?"

"You might change her sentry nightly," put in the Seneschal.

"Yes, if we knew whom we could trust; who would be above corruption.
As it is"--she shrugged her shoulders "that would be but to afford her
opportunities to bribe them one by one until they were all ready to act
in concert."

"Why need she any sentinel at all?" asked Tressan, with some show of
sense.

"To ward off possible traitors," she told him, and Marius smiled and
wagged his head.

"Madame is never done foreseeing the worst, monsieur."

"Which shows my wisdom. The men in our garrison are mercenaries, all
attached to us only because we pay them. They all know who she is and
what her wealth.