mission and identity.

He placed a chair at his visitor's disposal, himself resuming his seat
at his writing-table, and unfolding the paper Garnache had given him.
The newcomer seated himself, hitched his sword-belt round so that he
could lean both hands upon the hilt, and sat, stiff and immovable,
awaiting the Lord Seneschal's pleasure. From his desk across the room
the secretary, idly chewing the feathered end of his goose-quill, took
silent stock of the man from Paris, and wondered.

Tressan folded the paper carefully, and returned it to its owner. It
was no more than a formal credential, setting forth that Garnache was
travelling into Dauphiny on a State affair, and commanding Monsieur de
Tressan to give him every assistance he might require in the performance
of his errand.

"Parfaitement," purred the Lord Seneschal. "And now, monsieur, if you
will communicate to me the nature of your affair, you shall find me
entirely at your service."

"It goes without saying that you are acquainted with the Chateau de
Condillac?" began Garnache, plunging straight into business.

"Perfectly." The Seneschal leaned back, and was concerned to feel his
pulses throbbing a shade too quickly. But he controlled his features,
and maintained a placid, bland expression.

"You are perhaps acquainted with its inhabitants?"

"Yes."

"Intimate with them?"

The Seneschal pursed his lips, arched his brows, and slowly waved his
podgy hands, a combination of grimace and gesture that said much or
nothing. But reflecting that Monsieur de Tressan had a tongue, Garnache
apparently did not opine it worth his while to set a strain upon his own
imagination, for--

"Intimate with them?" he repeated, and this time there was a sharper
note in his voice.

Tressan leaned forward and brought his finger-tips together. His voice
was as urbane as it lay within its power to be.

"I understood that monsieur was proposing to state his business, not to
question mine."

Garnache sat back in his chair, and his eyes narrowed. He scented
opposition, and the greatest stumbling-block in Garnache's career had
been that he could never learn to brook opposition from any man. That
characteristic, evinced early in life, had all but been the ruin of him.
He was a man of high intellectual gifts, of military skill and great
resource; out of consideration for which had he been chosen by Marie de
Medicis to come upon this errand. But he marred it all by a temper so