ighter pink beneath it, the broad white
teeth, the short brown beard cut into a peak and bristling forward.

But it was not the sudden flash, it was not the laughing, cruel face,
which shot an ice-cold shudder through Francoise de Montespan. It was
that, of all men upon earth, this was he whom she most dreaded, and whom
she had least thought to see.

"Maurice!" she screamed. "Maurice! it is you!"

"Yes, little wifie, it is I. We are restored to each other's arms, you
see, after this interval."

"Oh, Maurice, how you have frightened me! How could you be so cruel?
Why would you not speak to me?"

"Because it was so sweet to sit in silence and to think that I really
had you to myself after all these years, with none to come between.
Ah, little wifie, I have often longed for this hour."

"I have wronged you, Maurice; I have wronged you! Forgive me!"

"We do not forgive in our family, my darling Francoise. Is it not like
old days to find ourselves driving together? And in this carriage, too.
It is the very one which bore us back from the cathedral where you made
your vows so prettily. I sat as I sit now, and you sat there, and I
took your hand like this, and I pressed it, and--"

"Oh, villain, you have twisted my wrist! You have broken my arm!"

"Oh, surely not, my little wifie! And then you remember that, as you
told me how truly you would love me, I leaned forward to your lips,
and--"

"Oh, help! Brute, you have cut my mouth! You have struck me with your
ring."

"Struck you! Now who would have thought that spring day when we planned
out our future, that this also was in the future waiting for me and you?
And this! and this!"

He struck savagely at her face in the darkness. She threw herself down,
her head pressed against the cushions. With the strength and fury of a
maniac he showered his blows above her, thudding upon the leather or
crashing upon the woodwork, heedless of his own splintered hands.

"So I have silenced you," said he at last. "I have stopped your words
with my kisses before now. But the world goes on, Francoise, and times
change, and women grow false, and men grow stern."

"You may kill me if you will," she moaned.

"I will," he said simply.

Still the carriage flew along, jolting and staggering in the
deeply-rutted country roads. The storm had passed, but the growl of the
thunder and the far-off glint of a lightning-flash were to be heard and
seen on the other side of