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But Mauville's words, on the whole, furthered the manager's project, and the audience remained in its integrity, while Balthazar, a property helmet in hand, descended from his palace and trod the aisles in his drab trunk-hose and purple cloak, a royal mendicant, in whose pot soon jingled the pieces of silver.
The latter, amazed this unusual strategem should have failed when directed by a wrist as trained and an eye as quick as Mauville's, now interposed. "Enough!" he exclaimed, separating the contestants. "Demme! it was superb. Honor has been satisfied." "It is nothing!" cried the land baron, fiercely. "His blade hardly touched me."
In other words, those rural delights of his forefathers, the pleasures of a closer intimacy with nature, awoke no responsive chord in Mauville's breast, and he began to tire before long of a patriarchal existence and crullers and oly-koeks and playing the fine lord in solitary grandeur.
But if his body was now inert, his mind was active. His thoughts dwelt upon the soldier's reticence, his disinclination to make acquaintances, and the coldness with which he had received his, Mauville's, advances in the Shadengo Valley. Why, asked Mauville, lying there and putting the pieces of the tale together, did not Saint-Prosper remain with his new-found friends, the enemies of his country?
Now the scene went round and round; the golden day became crimson, scarlet; then gray, leaden, somber. Incautiously he bent his arm to counter an imaginary lunge, and his antagonist thrust out his rapier like a thing of life, transfixing Mauville's sword arm. He stood his ground bravely for a moment, playing feebly into space, expecting the fatal stroke! When would it come?
He helped himself to a glass of burgundy and proceeded forthwith to enter into the history of his trust. Mynheer, the patroon, Mauville's predecessor, a lonely, arrogant man, had held tenaciously to the immense tracts of land acquired in the colonial days by nominal purchase.
The count's glance bent itself more closely on the figure of the soldier; noting now how superbly poised was his body; what reserves of strength were suggested by the white, muscular arm! His wrist moved like a machine, lightly brushing aside the thrusts. Had it been but accident that Mauville's unlooked-for expedient had failed? "The devil!" thought the count, watching the soldier.
Hating him for that free touch, she forcibly extricated herself with an exclamation and an expression of countenance there was no mistaking. From Mauville's face the glad light died; he regarded her once more cruelly, vindictively. "You dropped the mask too soon," he said, coldly. "I was not prepared for rehearsal, although you were perfect.
"You should do so much be so much in the world," she answered, thoughtfully. "Sans peur et sans reproche!" he cried, half-amused, half-cheerlessly. "What a pity I met you too late!" They were now at the broad entrance of the brilliantly-lighted hotel. Several loungers, smoking their after-dinner cigars, gazed at the couple curiously. "Mauville's a lucky dog," said one.
"The deputies shot two of the tenants to-day," hurriedly exclaimed the guardian of the place, without noticing Mauville's companion. "The farmers fired upon them; they replied, and one of the tenants is dead." "A good lesson for them, since they were the aggressors," cried the heir, as he sprang from the coach. "But you have startled the lady."
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