“Valerie,” he said, “it is not fitting you should remain.”
“Aye, take her hence,” the Dowager bade him, with a smile. “Her presence is unmanning our fine Parisian.”
Eager to do so, over-eager, Marius came forward, past his men-at-arms, until he was but some three paces from the girl and just out of reach of a sudden dart of Garnache’s sword.
Softly, very warily, Garnache slipped his right foot a little farther to the right. Suddenly he threw his weight upon it, so that he was clear of the girl. Before they understood what he was about, the thing had taken place. He had leaped forward, caught the young man by the breast of his shimmering doublet, leaped back to shelter beyond mademoiselle, hurled Marius to the ground, and planted his foot, shod as it was in his thickly mudded riding-boot, full upon the boy’s long, shapely neck.
“Move so much as a finger, my pretty fellow,” he snapped at him, “and I’ll crush the life from you as from a toad.”
There was a sudden forward movement on the part of the men; but if Garnache was vicious, he was calm. Were he again to lose his temper now, there would indeed be a speedy end to him. That much he knew, and kept repeating to himself, lest he should be tempted to forget it.
“Back!” he bade them in a voice so imperative that they stopped, and looked on with gaping mouths. “Back, or he perishes!” And dropping the point of his sword, he lightly rested it upon the young man’s breast.
In dismay they looked to the Dowager for instruction. She craned forward, the smile gone from her lips, a horror in her eyes, her bosom heaving. A moment ago she had smiled upon mademoiselle’s outward signs of fear; had mademoiselle been so minded, she might in her turn have smiled now at the terror written large upon the Dowager’s own face. But her attention was all absorbed by the swiftly executed act by which Garnache had gained at least a temporary advantage.
She had turned and looked at the strange spectacle of that dauntless man, erect, his foot upon Marius’s neck, like some fantastic figure of a contemporary Saint George and a contemporary dragon. She pressed her hands tighter upon her bosom; her eyes sparkled with an odd approval of that brisk deed.
But Garnache’s watchful eyes were upon the Dowager. He read the anxious fear that marred the beauty of her face, and he took heart at the sight, for he was dependent upon the extent to which he might work upon her feelings.