ender you thanks, if you can induce Monsieur
Lacheneur to accept the reparation which is due him--and he will accept
it, if you will only condescend to plead our cause. Who could resist
your sweet voice, your beautiful, beseeching eyes?"

However inexperienced Maurice might be, he could no longer fail to
comprehend Martial's intentions. This man whom he mortally hated
already, dared to speak of love to Marie-Anne, and before him, Maurice.
In other words, the marquis, not content with having ignored and
insulted him, presumed to take an insolent advantage of his supposed
simplicity.

The certainty of this insult sent all his blood in a boiling torrent to
his brain.

He seized Martial by the arm, and with irresistible power whirled him
twice around, then threw him more than ten feet, exclaiming:

"This last is too much, Marquis de Sairmeuse!"

Maurice's attitude was so threatening that Martial fully expected
another attack. The violence of the shock had thrown him down upon one
knee; without rising, he lifted his gun, ready to take aim.

It was not from anything like cowardice on the part of the Marquis de
Sairmeuse that he decided to fire upon an unarmed foe; but the affront
which he had received was so deadly and so ignoble in his opinion, that
he would have shot Maurice like a dog, rather than feel the weight of
his finger upon him again.

This explosion of anger from Maurice Marie-Anne had been expecting and
hoping for every moment.

She was even more inexperienced than her lover; but she was a woman, and
could not fail to understand the meaning of the young marquis.

He was evidently "paying his court to her." And with what intentions! It
was only too easy to divine.

Her agitation, while the marquis spoke in a more and more tender voice,
changed first to stupor, then to indignation, as she realized his
marvellous audacity.

After that, how could she help blessing the violence which put an end
to a situation which was so insulting for her, and so humiliating for
Maurice?

An ordinary woman would have thrown herself between the two men who were
ready to kill each other. Marie-Anne did not move a muscle.

Was it not the duty of Maurice to protect her when she was insulted?
Who, then, if not he, should defend her from the insolent gallantry of
this libertine? She would have blushed, she who was energy personified,
to love a weak and pusillanimous man.

But any intervention was unnecessary. Maurice comp