For the next fortnight he came nearly every day. Sometimes M. de Courson would be at home; sometimes—more seldom—Laurent would be there; but nearly always the two ladies would be alone, and Madame would talk about her troubles, and Ronnay de Maurel listened with half an ear, while his eyes followed Fernande's every movement.
Within a week he had offered to his mother and to Laurent his own Château of La Frontenay as a residence, and Madame la Marquise had graciously accepted the offer. It had been made because at the precise moment when de Maurel had his eyes fixed on Fernande, she had looked up at him, and Madame had said quite casually: "Fernande will make her home with me for the next few months while my brother and Laurent are away," and Fernande had added with a pathetic little sigh: "Is it not pitiable that ma tante has no home of her own, whilst you are so rich, mon cousin, and your château stands empty?"
By this time every counsel of wisdom and prudence spoken by Gaston de Maurel had long since been forgotten. Ronnay saw things through a pair of blue eyes, his thoughts only mirrored those which had their birth behind a smooth, white forehead and beneath a crown of golden hair.
To Laurent, however, his brother's daily visits at Courson were nothing short of martyrdom, and it took Madame la Marquise all her time and all her powers of persuasive eloquence to keep her younger son out of the way when de Maurel called. If by some mischance the brothers met, a quarrel was only averted by Madame's untiring tact and—it must be admitted—by Ronnay's own determination to avoid another scene which might hopelessly imperil the friendly footing which he had earned for himself in the house where dwelt his divinity.
That Ronnay de Maurel was by this time deeply in love with Fernande no one could fail to see. Madame la Marquise chose to pooh-pooh the idea only because she was afraid of Laurent's outbursts of jealousy, which would thwart all her carefully laid plans before she had put them into execution. Laurent, of a truth, was almost beside himself during these days; even though Fernande soothed his jealous temper with more soft words and more endearing ways than she had been wont to bestow on him in the past. Though the young man suffered acutely all the while that he knew de Maurel to be in Fernande's company, she very quickly sent him into paradise the moment the ogre was out of the way.
"I am working for King and country," the young girl would say, with a kind of dreamy exultation, whenever—after the departure of de Maurel—she had to endure one of Laurent's outbursts of insensate rage. "Think you that it is a pleasure to me to be in daily contact with such an odious creature? Bah! meseems when I speak with him that I can see the spectre of our martyred King and Queen calling to me to avenge them! Surely," she added reproachfully, "if I can endure the looks, the touch, the propinquity of the traitor, if I can bear the thought that he actually dares to sully me with his love, you, Laurent, might for the sake of our cause try to keep your unwarrantable jealousy in check."
"How can I?" exclaimed Laurent vehemently, "when I know that the man has dared to make love to you...."
"Nay, he has not yet done that, dear Laurent," broke in Fernande thoughtfully.
"But you mean to allow him to make love to you when the fancy seizes him!" he retorted angrily.
"Indeed I do. I have a wager on it with you. Have I not said that the bear would dance to my piping?"