Marquis de Bellecour stood before them. He was a tall man of some
fifty years of age, but so powerful of frame and so scrupulous in
dress that he might have conveyed an impression of more youth. His
face, though handsome in a high-bred way, was puffed and of an
unhealthy yellow. But the eyes were as keen as the mouth was
voluptuous, and in his carefully dressed black hair there were few
strands of grey.

He came slowly forward, and his lowering glance wandered from his
daughter to his secretary in inquiry. At last -

"Well?" he demanded. "What is the matter?"

"It is nothing, Monsieur," his daughter answered him. "A trifling
affair 'twixt M. la Boulaye and me, with which I will not trouble
you."

"It is not nothing, my lord," cried La Boulaye, his voice vibrating
oddly. "It is that I love your daughter and that I have told her
of it." He was in a very daring mood that morning.

The Marquis glanced at him in dull amazement. Then a flush crept
into his sallow cheeks and mounted to his brow. An inarticulate
grunt came from his thick lips.

"Canaille!" he exclaimed, through set teeth. "Can you have presumed
so far?"

He carried a riding-switch, and he seemed to grasp it now in a manner
peculiarly menacing. But La Boulaye was nothing daunted. Lost he