es of ancient armour, and with implements of the
chase. In the centre stood an oblong table of black oak, very richly
carved about its massive legs, and in a china bowl, on this, an armful
of late roses filled the room with their sweet fragrance.

Then Garnache espied a page on the window-seat, industriously burnishing
a cuirass. He pursued his task, indifferent to the newcomer's advent,
until the knave who had conducted thither the Parisian called the boy
and bade him go tell the Marquise that a Monsieur de Garnache, with a
message from the Queen-Regent, begged an audience.

The boy rose, and simultaneously, out of a great chair by the hearth,
whose tall back had hitherto concealed him, there rose another figure.
This was a stripling of some twenty summers--twenty-one, in fact--of
a pale, beautifully featured face, black hair and fine black eyes, and
very sumptuously clad in a suit of shimmering silk whose colour shifted
from green to purple as he moved.

Monsieur de Garnache assumed that he was in the presence of Marius de
Condillac. He bowed a trifle stiffly, and was surprised to have his bow
returned with a graciousness that amounted almost to cordiality.

"You are from Paris, monsieur?" said the young man, in a gentle,
pleasant voice. "I fear you have had indifferent weather for your
journey."

Garnache thought of other things besides the weather that he had found
indifferent, and he felt warmed almost to the point of anger at the very
recollection. But he bowed again, and answered amiably enough.

The young man offered him a seat, assuring him that his mother would not
keep him waiting long. The page had already gone upon his errand.

Garnache took the proffered chair, and sank down with creak and jingle
to warm himself at the fire.

"From what you have said, I gather that you are Monsieur Marius de
Condillac," said he. "I, as you may have heard me announced by your
servant, am Martin Marie Rigobert de Garnache--at your service."

"We have heard of you, Monsieur de Garnache," said the youth as he
crossed his shapely legs of silken violet, and fingered the great pearl
that depended from his ear. "But we had thought that by now you would be
on your way to Paris."

"No doubt--with Margot," was the grim rejoinder.

But Marius either gathered no suggestion from its grimness, or did not
know the name Garnache uttered, for he continued:

"We understood that you were to escort Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye to