. In so doing you need have
no doubts concerning me. M. d'Ombreval is my betrothed, and the troth I
plighted him binds me in honour to succour him now."

La Boulaye looked steadily at her for a moment.

"Upon my soul," he said at last, a note of ineffable sarcasm vibrating
in his voice, "I shall never cease to admire the effrontery of your
class, and the coolness with which, in despite of dishonourable action,
you make high-sounding talk of honour and the things to which it binds
you. I have a dim recollection, Citoyenne, of something uncommonly like
your troth which you plighted me one night at Boisvert. But so little
did that promise bind you that when I sought to enforce your fulfilment
of it you broke my head and left me to die in the road."

His words shook her out of her calm. Her bosom rose and fell, her eyes
seemed to grow haggard and her hands were clasped convulsively.

"Monsieur," she answered, "when I gave you my promise that night I had
every intention of keeping it. I swear it, as Heaven is my witness."

"Your actions more than proved it," he said dryly.

"Be generous, Monsieur," she begged. "It was my mother prevailed upon me
to alter my determination. She urged that I should be dishonoured if I
did not."

"That word again!" he cried. "What part it plays in the life of the
noblesse. All that it suits you to do, you do because honour bids you,
all to which you have bound yourselves, but which is distasteful, you
discover that honour forbids, and that you would be dishonoured did you
persist. But I am interrupting you, Citoyenne. Did your mother advance
any arguments?"

"The strongest argument of all lay here, in my heart, Monsieur," she
answered him, roused and hardened by his scorn. "You must see that it
had become with me a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Upon
reflection I discovered that I was bound to two men, and it behoved me
to keep the more binding of my pledges."

"Which you discovered to be your word to Ombreval," he said, and his
voice grew unconsciously softer, for he began to realise the quandary in
which she had found herself.

She inclined her head assentingly.

"To him I had given the earlier promise, and then, again, he was of my
own class whilst you--"

"Spare me, Citoyenne," he cried. "I know what you would say. I am of the
rabble, and of little more account in a matter of honour than a beast of
the field. It is thus that you reason, and yet, mon Dieu! I had tho