"Chateaurien! Chateaurien!" they shouted, and smote so swiftly that,
through lack of time, they showed no proper judgment, discriminating
nothing between non-combatants and their master's foes. They charged
first into the group about M. Beaucaire, and broke and routed it
utterly. Two of them leaped to the young man's side, while the other
four, swerving, scarce losing the momentum of their onset, bore on upon
the gentlemen near the coach, who went down beneath the fierceness of
the onslaught, cursing manfully.

"Our just deserts," said Mr. Molyneux, his mouth full of dust and
philosophy.

Sir Hugh Guilford's horse fell with him, being literally ridden over,
and the baronet's leg was pinned under the saddle. In less than ten
minutes from the first attack on M. Beaucaire, the attacking party
had fled in disorder, and the patrician non-combatants, choking with
expletives, consumed with wrath, were prisoners, disarmed by the
Frenchman's lackeys.

Guilford's discomfiture had freed the doors of the coach; so it was that
when M. Beaucaire, struggling to rise, assisted by his servants, threw
out one hand to balance himself, he found it seized between two small,
cold palms, and he looked into two warm, dilating eyes, that were doubly
beautiful because of the fright and rage that found room in them, too.

M. le Duc Chateaurien sprang to his feet without the aid of his lackeys,
and bowed low before Lady Mary.

"I make ten thousan' apology to be' the cause of a such melee in your
presence," he said; and then, turning to Francois, he spoke in French: