“You fled from France; I fled from the ancestral manor. The tenants claimed the farms were theirs. I attempted to turn them out and––they turned me out! I might as well have inherited a hornet’s nest. It was a legacy-of hate! The old patroon must have chuckled in his grave! One night they called with the intention of hanging me.”
“My dear sir, I congratulate you!” exclaimed the nobleman enthusiastically.
“Thanks!” Dryly.
“It is the test of gentility. They only hang or cut off the heads of people of distinction nowadays.”
“Gad! then I came near joining the ranks of the well-born angels. But for an accident I should now be a cherub of quality.”
“And how, Monsieur, did you escape such a felicitous fate?”
The land baron’s face clouded. “Through a stranger––a Frenchman––a silent, taciturn fellow––more or less an adventurer, I take it. He called himself Saint-Prosper––”
“Saint-Prosper!”
The marquis gazed at Mauville with amazement and incredulity. He might even have flushed or turned pale, but such a possible exhibition of emotion was lost beneath an artificial bloom, painted by his valet. His eyes, however, gleamed like candles in a death’s head.