Madame’s face was ashen. She judged the girl by her own self; she had no knowledge of any such infinite sweetness as that of this child’s nature, a sweetness that could do no hurt to any. Death was what the Marquise expected, since she knew that death would she herself have pronounced had the positions been reversed. But—
“Let her go in peace, monsieur,” she heard mademoiselle say, and she could not believe but that she was being mocked. And as if mockery were at issue, Garnache laughed.
“We will let her go, mademoiselle—yet not quite her own way. You must not longer remain unrestrained, madame,” he told the Marquise. “Natures such as yours need a man’s guidance. I think you will be sufficiently punished if you wed this rash Monsieur de Tressan, just as he will be sufficiently punished later when disillusionment follows his present youthful ardour. Make each other happy, then,” and he waved his arms from one to the other. “Our good Father, here, will tie the knot at once, and then, my Lord Seneschal, you may bear home your bride. Her son shall follow you.”
But the Marquise blazed out now. She stamped her foot, and her eyes seemed to have taken fire.
“Never, sir! Never in life!” she cried. “I will not be so constrained. I am the Marquise de Condillac, monsieur. Do not forget it!”
“I am hardly in danger of doing that. It is because I remember it that I urge you to change your estate with all dispatch; and cease to be the Marquise de Condillac. That same Marquise has a heavy score against her. Let her evade payment by this metamorphosis. I have opened for you, madame, a door through which you may escape.”
“You are insolent,” she told him. “By God, sir! I am no baggage to be disposed of by the will of any man.”
At that Garnache himself took fire. Her anger proved as the steel smiting the flint of his own nature, and one of his fierce bursts of blazing passion whirled about her head.
“And what of this child, here?” he thundered. “What of her, madame? Was she a baggage to be disposed of by the will of any man or woman? Yet you sought to dispose of her against her heart, against her nature, against her plighted word. Enough said!” he barked, and so terrific was his mien and voice that the stout-spirited Dowager was cowed, and recoiled as he advanced a step in her direction. “Get you married. Take you this man to husband, you who with such calmness sought to drive others into unwilling wedlock. Do it, madame, and do it now, or by the Heaven above us, you shall come to Paris with me, and you’ll not find them nice there. It will avail you little to storm and shout at them that you are Marquise de Condillac. As a murderess and a rebel shall you be tried, and as both or either it is odds you will be broken on the wheel—and your son with you. So make your choice, madame.”
He ceased. Valerie had caught him by the arm. At once his fury fell from him. He turned to her.