old as to belie the politeness of his words.
"A chair, I beg. Ah, Moreau?" The note was frigidly interrogative. "He
accompanies you, monsieur?" he asked.

"If you please, M. le Marquis."

"Why not? Find yourself a seat, Moreau." He spoke over his shoulder as
to a lackey.

"It is good of you, monsieur," said Philippe, "to have offered me this
opportunity of continuing the subject that took me so fruitlessly, as it
happens, to Gavrillac."

The Marquis crossed his legs, and held one of his fine hands to the
blaze. He replied, without troubling to turn to the young man, who was
slightly behind him.

"The goodness of my request we will leave out of question for the
moment," said he, darkly, and M. de Chabrillane laughed. Andre-Louis
thought him easily moved to mirth, and almost envied him the faculty.

"But I am grateful," Philippe insisted, "that you should condescend to
hear me plead their cause."

The Marquis stared at him over his shoulder. "Whose cause?" quoth he.

"Why, the cause of the widow and orphans of this unfortunate Mabey."

The Marquis looked from Vilmorin to the Chevalier, and again the
Chevalier laughed, slapping his leg this time.

"I think," said M. de La Tour d'Azyr, slowly, "that we are at
cross-purposes. I asked you to come here because the Chateau de
Gavrillac was hardly a suitable place in which to carry our discussion
further, and because I hesitated to incommode you by suggesting that you
should come all the way to Azyr. But my object is connected with certain
expressions that you let fall up there. It is on the subject of those
expressions, monsieur, that I would hear you further--if you will honour
me."

Andre-Louis began to apprehend that there was something sinister in the
air. He was a man of quick intuitions, quicker far than those of M. de
Vilmorin, who evinced no more than a mild surprise.

"I am at a loss, monsieur," said he. "To what expressions does monsieur
allude?"

"It seems, monsieur, that I must refresh your memory." The Marquis
crossed his legs, and swung sideways on his chair, so that at last he
directly faced M. de Vilmorin. "You spoke, monsieur--and however mistaken
you may have been, you spoke very eloquently, too eloquently almost, it
seemed to me--of the infamy of such a deed as the act of summary justice
upon this thieving fellow Mabey, or whatever his name may be. Infamy was
the precise word you used. You did not retract that word when I had the
honour to in