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