paced the apartment in a frenzy. Never in the fifteen
years that were sped since he had been raised to the governorship of
the province had any man taken such a tone with him and harangued him in
such terms.

A liar and a traitor had he been called that morning, a knave and a
fool; he had been browbeaten and threatened; and he had swallowed it
all, and almost turned to lick the hand that administered the dose.
Dame! What manner of cur was he become? And the man who had done
all this--a vulgar upstart out of Paris, reeking of leather and the
barrack-room still lived!

Bloodshed was in his mind; murder beckoned him alluringly to take her as
his ally. But he put the thought from him, frenzied though he might be.
He must fight this knave with other weapons; frustrate his mission, and
send him back to Paris and the Queen's scorn, beaten and empty-handed.

"Babylas's!" he shouted.

Immediately the secretary appeared.

"Have you given thought to the matter of Captain d'Aubran?" he asked,
his voice an impatient snarl.

"Yes, monsieur, I have pondered it all morning."

"Well? And what have you concluded?"

"Helas! monsieur, nothing."

Tressan smote the table before him a blow that shook some of the dust
out of the papers that cumbered it. "Ventregris! How am I served? For
what do I pay you, and feed you, and house you, good-for-naught, if you
are to fail me whenever I need the things you call your brains? Have you
no intelligence, no thought, no imagination? Can you invent no plausible
business, no likely rising, no possible disturbances that shall justify
my sending Aubran and his men to Montelimar--to the very devil, if need
be."

The secretary trembled in his every limb; his eyes shunned his master's
as his master's had shunned Garnache's awhile ago. The Seneschal was
enjoying himself. If he had been bullied and browbeaten, here, at least,
was one upon whom he, in his turn, might taste the joys of bullying and
browbeating.

"You lazy, miserable calf," he stormed, "I might be better served by
a wooden image. Go! It seems I must rely upon myself. It is always so.
Wait!" he thundered; for the secretary, only too glad to obey his last
order, had already reached the door. "Tell Anselme to bid the Captain
attend me here at once."

Babylas's bowed and went his errand.

A certain amount of his ill-humour vented, Tressan made an effort to
regain his self-control. He passed his handkerchief for the last time
over fac