"Monsieur, the wine has turned your head," said the regent scornfully. "You boast!"
"I boast of nothing," cried Law, savagely, his voice now ringing with a tone none present had ever known it to assume. "I say to you again, this woman was my slave, and that she will again do as I shall choose. Your Grace, she would come and wipe the dust from my shoes if I should command it! She would kneel at my feet, and beg of me, if I should command it! Shall I prove this, your Grace?"
"Oh, assuredly!" replied the regent, with a sarcasm which now seemed his only relief. "Assuredly, if Monsieur L'as should please. We here in Paris are quite his humble servants."
Law said nothing. He stood with his biting blue eyes still fixed upon Mary Connynge, whose own eyes faltered, trying their utmost to escape from his; whose fingers, resting just lightly on the snowy Hollands of the table cloth, moved tremulously; whose limbs appeared ready to sink beneath her.
"Come, then, Mary Connynge!" cried Law at last, his teeth setting savagely together. "Come, then, traitress and slave, and kneel before me, as you did once before!"
Then there ensued a strange and horrible spectacle. A hush as of death fell upon the group. Mary Connynge, trembling, halting, yet always advancing, did indeed as her master had bidden! She passed from the head of the table, back of the chair of the regent, who stood gazing with horror in his eyes; she passed the chair of Aïssé, near which Law now stood; she paused in front of him, and stood as though in a dream. Her knees would have indeed sunk beneath her. She drew from her bosom a silken kerchief, as though she would indeed have performed the ignoble service which had been threatened for her. There came neither voice nor motion to those who saw this thing. The sheer force of one strong nature, terrible in the intensity of one supreme moment—this might have been the spell which commanded at the table of the regent. Yet this did occur.
There came a sound which broke the silence, which caused all to start as with swift relief. A sob, short, dry, hard, as from one whose heart is broken, came from beyond the place where Law stood facing the trembling woman. The eyes of all turned upon Will Law, from whom had burst this irrepressible exclamation of agony. Will Law, as one grown swiftly old, haggard, broken-down, stood gazing in wide-eyed horror at this woman, so humiliated in the presence of all in this brilliantly-lighted hall; before the blazing mirrors which should have reflected back naught but beauty and joy; under the twining roses, which should have been the signs manual of undying love; under the smiling cherubs, which should have typified the deities of happy love. Will Law, too, had loved. Perhaps still he loved.
This sharp sound served to break also the spell under which Law himself seemed held. He cast aloft his arms, as in remorse or in despair. Then he extended a hand to the woman who would have sunk before him.
"God forgive me! Madam," he cried. "I had forgot. Savage indeed you are and have been, but 'tis not for me to treat you brutally."
"Your Grace," said he, turning toward the regent, "I crave your pardon. Our explanations shall reach you on the morrow."