despair. Then, in the eleventh
hour, Mademoiselle de Lavedan comes to you to plead for my life. By that
act she gives you the most ample proof that your wager is lost. What
would a gentleman, a man of honour, have done under these circumstances?
What did you do? You seized that last chance; you turned it to the best
account; you made this poor girl buy something from you; you made her
sell herself to you for nothing--pretending that your nothing was a
something of great value. What term shall we apply to that? To say that
you cheated again seems hardly adequate."

"By God, Bardelys!"

"Wait!" I thundered, looking him straight between the eyes, so that
again he sank back cowed. Then resuming the calm with which hitherto I
had addressed him, "Your cupidity," said I, "your greed for the estates
of Bardelys, and your jealousy and thirst to see me impoverished and so
ousted from my position at Court, to leave you supreme in His Majesty's
favour, have put you to strange shifts for a gentleman, Chatellerault.
Yet, wait."

And, dipping my pen in the ink-horn, I began to write. I was conscious
of his eyes upon me, and I could imagine his surmisings and bewildered
speculations as my pen scratched rapidly across the paper. In a few
moments it was done, and I tossed the pen aside. I took up the sandbox.

"When a man cheats, Monsieur le Comte, and is detected, he is invariably
adjudged the loser of his stakes. On that count alone everything that
you have is now mine by rights." Again I had to quell an interruption.
"But if we wave that point, and proceed upon the supposition that you
have dealt fairly and honourably with me, why, then, monsieur, you
have still sufficient evidence--the word of Mademoiselle, herself,
in fact--that I have won my wager. And so, if we take this, the most
lenient view of the case"--I paused to sprinkle the sand over my
writing--"your estates are still lost to you, and pass to be my
property."

"Do they, by God?" he roared, unable longer to restrain himself, and
leaping to his feet. "You have done, have you not? You have said all
that you can call to mind? You have flung insults and epithets at me
enough to earn the cutting of a dozen throats. You have dubbed me cheat
and thief"--he choked in his passion--"until you have had your fill--is
it not so? Now, listen to me, Master Bardelys, master spy, master
buffoon, master masquerader! What manner of proceeding was yours to go
to Lavedan under a false n