kick, he dragged Wilkie back into the little drawing-room. "Yes, it's
I," he said, curtly. "It's I--come to inquire if you have gone mad?"

"Viscount!"

"I can find no other explanation of your conduct! What! You choose
Madame d'Argeles's reception day, and an hour when there are fifty
guests in her drawing-room to present yourself!"

"Ah, well! it wasn't from choice. I had been there twice before, and had
the doors shut in my face."

"You ought to have gone back ten times, a hundred times, a thousand
times, rather than have accomplished such an idiotic prank as this."

"Excuse me."

"What did I recommend? Prudence, calmness and moderation, persuasive
gentleness, sentiments of the loftiest nature, tenderness, a shower of
tears----"

"Possibly, but----"

"But instead of that, you fall upon this woman like a thunderbolt, and
set the whole household in the wildest commotion. What could you be
thinking of, to make such an absurd and frightful scene? For you
howled and shrieked like a street hawker, and we could hear you in the
drawing-room. If all is not irretrievably lost, there must be a special
Providence for the benefit of fools!"

In his dismay, Wilkie endeavored to falter some excuses, but he was
only able to begin a few sentences which died away, uncompleted in his
throat. The violence shown by M. de Coralth, who was usually as cold and
as polished as marble, quieted his own wrath. Still toward the last he
felt disposed to rebel against the insults that were being heaped upon
him. "Do you know, viscount, that I begin to think this very strange,"
he exclaimed. "If any one else had led me into such a scrape, I should
have called him to account in double-quick time."

M. de Coralth shrugged his shoulders with an air of contempt, and
threateningly replied: "Understand, once for all, that you had better
not attempt to bully me! Now, tell me what passed between your mother
and yourself?"

"First I should like----"

"Dash it all! Do you suppose that I intend to remain here all night?
Tell me what occurred, and be quick about it. And try to speak the
truth."

It was one of M. Wilkie's greatest boasts that he had an indomitable
will--an iron nature. But the viscount exercised powerful influence over
him, and, to tell the truth, inspired him with a form of emotion which
was nearly akin to fear. Moreover, a glimmer of reason had at last
penetrated his befogged brain: he saw that M. de Coralth was right--that