as still
Fortunio to stand by and see to it that the right sword pierced the
right heart, else would his pistoles be lost to him.

Nevertheless she was fretted by anxiety, and she waited impatiently for
news, fuming at the delay, yet knowing full well that news could not yet
reach her.

Once she reproved Valerie for her lack of appetite, and there was in
her voice a kindness Valerie had not heard for months--not since the old
Marquis died, nor did she hear it now, or, hearing it, she did not heed
it.

"You are not eating, child," the Dowager said, and her eyes were gentle.

Valerie looked up like one suddenly awakened; and in that moment her
eyes filled with tears. It was as if the Dowager's voice had opened the
floodgates of her sorrow and let out the tears that hitherto had been
repressed. The Marquise rose and waved the page and an attendant lackey
from the room. She crossed to Valerie's side and put her arm about the
girl's shoulder.

"What ails you, child?" she asked. For a moment the girl suffered the
caress; almost she seemed to nestle closer to the Dowager's shoulder.
Then, as if understanding had come to her suddenly, she drew back and
quietly disengaged herself from the other's arms. Her tears ceased; the
quiver passed from her lip.

"You are very good, madame," she said, with a coldness that rendered the
courteous words almost insulting, "but nothing ails me save a wish to be
alone."

"You have been alone too much of late," the Dowager answered, persisting
in her wish to show kindness to Valerie; for all that, had she looked
into her own heart, she might have been puzzled to find a reason for her
mood--unless the reason lay in her own affliction of anxiety for Marius.

"Perhaps I have," said the girl, in the same cold, almost strained
voice. "It was not by my own contriving."

"Ah, but it was, child; indeed it was. Had you been reasonable you had
found us kinder. We had never treated you as we have done, never made a
prisoner of you."

Valerie looked up into the beautiful ivory-white face, with its black
eyes and singularly scarlet lips, and a wan smile raised the corners of
her gentle mouth.

"You had no right--none ever gave it you--to set constraint and
restraint upon me."

"I had--indeed, indeed I had," the Marquise answered her, in a tone of
sad protest. "Your father gave me such a right when he gave me charge of
you."

"Was it a part of your charge to seek to turn me from my loyalty to