"Dare you threaten me?" and De Roberval laid his hand on his sword.
Charles imitated his action.
"Keep that plaything where it is. I have here at my side the sword I wore on the Sillon. Your weapon might shrink from its touch."
"Curse you!" hissed De Roberval; but remembering how girt about with foes was Charles, he checked himself, and with an evil smile said: "I forgot for a moment that you are my guest, with a petition to offer. Out with it! There is nothing I should not be willing to grant you."
"It is of Mdlle. de Roberval I have come to speak," said Charles, with a sternness which made the nobleman tremble lest his plans should miscarry. "Since I returned to France, two months ago, strange tales of your brutal treatment of your niece have reached my ears. I have come to you to find out the truth of these tales. If they are true, I will cut you off as a cursed thing among men. If you can prove them false, I swear I will defend your honour against every man who insults it by repeating them."
"I need no champion," said De Roberval testily. "I have done no wrong. Your friend, whom I trusted, whom I took into my house, whom I saw nursed back to life in this very room, proved a faithless ingrate, and betrayed the trust I had placed in him."
"Liar!" came from between Charles' set teeth.
But De Roberval, unheeding the interruption, went on:
"To save my niece's honour I took her with me to the New World, and bade her lover venture not on board my vessel. But scarcely were we a day at sea when he stood by her side, having found his way on board among a gang of criminals. He disgraced the name of De Roberval before the whole world. I put him in chains for his disobedience; and still he seduced my niece to his side. Could I, as a just ruler, spare my own? I put her on an island in the northern seas, with the two jades who had abetted her crime; and her wretched paramour leaped into the ocean, and doubtless perished ere he reached the shore."