"The marquis is there on the porch," said the servant, with a gesture towards the house.
Jack's heart leaped up. "Thank God!" he muttered, and dismounted, throwing his bridle to the porter, who now appeared in the doorway.
He could see the marquis walking to and fro, hands clasped behind his strong, athletic back; his head was turned in Jack's direction. "The marquis is crazy," thought Jack, hesitating. He was convinced now that long brooding over ancient wrongs had unsettled the man's mind. There had always been something in his dazzling blue eyes that troubled Jack, and now he knew it was the pale light of suppressed frenzy. Still, he would have to face him sooner or later, and he did not recoil now that the hour and the place and the man had come.
"I'll settle it once for all," he thought, and walked straight up the path to the house. The marquis came down the steps to meet him.
"I expected you," he said, without a trace of anger. "I have much to say to you. Will you come in or shall we sit in the arbour there? You will enter? Then come to the turret, Monsieur Marche."
Jack would have refused, but he had not the courage. He was not at all pleased at the idea of mounting to a turret with a man whom he had laid violent hands on the night before, a man whom he had seen succumb to an access of insane fury in the presence of the Emperor of France. But he went, cursing the cowardice that prevented him from being cautious; and in a few moments he entered the chamber where retorts and bottles and steel machinery littered every corner, and the pale dawn broke through the window in ghastly streams of light, changing the candle-flames to sickly greenish blotches.
They sat opposite each other, neither speaking. Jack glanced at a heavy steel rod on the floor beside him. It was just as well to know it was there, in case of need.
"Monsieur," said the marquis, abruptly, "I owe you a great deal more than my life, which is nothing; I owe you my family honour."
This was a new way of looking at the situation; Jack fidgeted in his chair and eyed the marquis.
"Thanks to you," he continued, quietly, "I am not an assassin, I am not a butcher of dogs. The De Nesvilles were never public executioners—they left that to the Bonapartes and Monsieur de Paris."