laughed and shrugged.

"That is the answer I might have expected. It has the right note of cant
that distinguishes the philosophers."

And then M. de Chabrillane spoke.

"You go a long way round," he criticized his cousin, on a note of
impatience.

"But I am getting there," he was answered. "I desired to make quite
certain first."

"Faith, you should have no doubt by now."

"I have none." The Marquis rose, and turned again to M. de Vilmorin, who
had understood nothing of that brief exchange. "M. l'abbe," said he once
more, "you have a very dangerous gift of eloquence. I can conceive of
men being swayed by it. Had you been born a gentleman, you would not so
easily have acquired these false views that you express."

M. de Vilmorin stared blankly, uncomprehending.

"Had I been born a gentleman, do you say?" quoth he, in a slow,
bewildered voice. "But I was born a gentleman. My race is as old, my
blood as good as yours, monsieur."

From M. le Marquis there was a slight play of eyebrows, a vague,
indulgent smile. His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the face of
M. de Vilmorin.

"You have been deceived in that, I fear."

"Deceived?"

"Your sentiments betray the indiscretion of which madame your mother
must have been guilty."

The brutally affronting words were sped beyond recall, and the lips that
had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest commonplace,
remained calm and faintly sneering.

A dead silence followed. Andre-Louis' wits were numbed. He stood aghast,
all thought suspended in him, what time M. de Vilmorin's eyes continued
fixed upon M. de La Tour d'Azyr's, as if searching there for a meaning
that eluded him. Quite suddenly he understood the vile affront. The
blood leapt to his face, fire blazed in his gentle eyes. A convulsive
quiver shook him. Then, with an inarticulate cry, he leaned forward, and
with his open hand struck M. le Marquis full and hard upon his sneering
face.

In a flash M. de Chabrillane was on his feet, between the two men.

Too late Andre-Louis had seen the trap. La Tour d'Azyr's words were but
as a move in a game of chess, calculated to exasperate his opponent into
some such counter-move as this--a counter-move that left him entirely at
the other's mercy.

M. le Marquis looked on, very white save where M. de Vilmorin's
finger-prints began slowly to colour his face; but he said nothing more.
Instead, it was M. de Chabrillane who now did the talking, taking