ready to set out betimes to-morrow. If you will be so good as to
wait upon me early you shall have your instructions."

Mystified, Monsieur d'Aubran departed on his errand, and my Lord
Seneschal went down to supper well pleased with the cunning device
by which he was to leave Grenoble without a garrison. It was an
astute way of escape from the awkward situation into which his
attachment to the interests of the dowager of Condillac was likely
to place him.

But when the morning came he was less pleased with the idea, chiefly
because he had been unable to invent any details that should lend
it the necessary colour, and d'Aubran - worse luck - was an
intelligent officer who might evince a pardonable but embarrassing
curiosity. A leader of soldiers has a right to know something at
least of the enterprise upon which he leads them. By morning, too,
Tressan found that the intervening space of the night, since he had
seen Madame de Condillac, had cooled his ardour very considerably.

He had reached the incipient stages of regret of his rash promise.

When Captain d'Aubran was announced to him, he bade them ask him to
come again in an hour's time. From mere regrets he was passing now,
through dismay, into utter repentance of his promise. He sat in his
study, at his littered writing-table, his head in his hands, a
confusion of thoughts, a wild, frenzied striving after invention in
his brain.

Thus Anselme found him when he thrust aside the portiere to announce
that a Monsieur de Garnache, from Paris, was below, demanding to see