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If all else failed, we might be glad of it." "Glad of it? Not I, for one. Yet all else will fail unless you bestir yourself in the next three days. Condillac is as good as lost to you already, since Florimond is upon the threshold. La Vauvraye most certainly will be lost to you as well unless you make haste to snatch it in the little moment that is left you."
He began by what he conceived to be the more urgent measure, and stepping across to the Palais Seneschal, he demanded to see Monsieur de Tressan at once. Ushered into the Lord Seneschal's presence, he startled that obese gentleman by the announcement that he had returned from Condillac with Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, and that he would require an escort to accompany them to Paris.
The man was right, and Garnache was wrong. He had no title to take up the affairs of Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye. But he was past reason now, and he was not the man to brook haughtiness, however courteously it might be cloaked. He eyed the Marquis's flushed ace across the board, and his lip curled. "Monsieur," said he, "I take your meaning very fully.
"Still," he continued, "you will be so good as to remember that I am not my own master in this affair. Were that so, I should not fail to relieve you at once of my unbidden presence." "Oh, monsieur " "But, being the Queen's emissary, I have her orders to obey, and those orders are to convey Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye to Paris.
It was the dearest wish of his heart to transform what had been a lifelong friendship in his own generation into a closer relationship in the next a wish that found a very ready echo in the heart of Monsieur de Condillac. Florimond de Condillac was sixteen years of age at the time, and Valerie de La Vauvraye fourteen.
"All being as you say, madame," he continued, "will you tell me why, instead of some message to this purport, you sent Monsieur de Tressan back to me with a girl taken from some kitchen or barnyard, whom it was sought to pass off upon me as Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye?" The Marquise laughed, and her son, who had shown signs of perturbation, taking his cue from her, laughed too.
If you would still win Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye, you shall win her from me at point of sword. Fortunio, see to the door." "Wait, Marius!" cried Florimond, and he looked genuinely aghast. "Do not forget that we are brothers, men of the same blood; that my father was your father." "I choose to remember rather that we are rivals," answered Marius, and he drew his rapier.
But Marius either gathered no suggestion from its grimness, or did not know the name Garnache uttered, for he continued: "We understood that you were to escort Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye to Paris, to place her under the tutelage of the Queen-Regent.
"I had hoped you would have saved me from it, Marius," she answered him, her eyes seeming to gaze down into the depths of his. "At La Vauvraye I had hoped to live out my widowhood in tranquil dignity. But " She let her arms fall sharply to her sides, and uttered a little sneering laugh.
She would have done it gladly, content that Marius should be heir to Condillac. But now that Condillac was assured her son, she must have more for him; her insatiable greed for his advancement and prosperity was again upon her. Now, more than ever now that Florimond was dead must she have La Vauvraye for Marius, and she thought that mademoiselle would no longer be difficult to bend.
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