The March sun was setting on the hamlet of La Rivière, in the pleasant land of Touraine—Touraine the fit home of so many noble châteaux, the cradle of so many of the proudest traditions and the most inspiring memories of the romance of love and chivalry in the history of France.

André was standing in the churchyard of the hamlet, but it was not at the landscape that he knew so well that he was looking, nor even up the slope beyond, where the great Château de Beau Séjour shot its towers and pointed turrets through its encircling domain of wood. Ten leagues away in the dim distance lay Nérac, the poverty-stricken home from which he took his title, and whose meagre patrimony encumbered with the debts of his ancestors and his own barely sufficed to provide a living for the widowed mother to whom that morning he had said good-bye and whom the English in the Low Countries might decide he should never see again.

Yet it was not of his mother that he was thinking, still less of the enchantress of the forest whose identity he had discovered—one Mademoiselle d’Étiolles she had proved to be, “La Petite d’Étiolles,” as that gay Lothario the Duc de Richelieu called her, the daughter of a Farmer-General, a bourgeoisie notorious for her beauty, her wit, and her friendship with the wits. Indeed he had forgotten the rose-pink divinity in the azure phaeton entirely. No, he was striving to pluck up courage to face Denise and receive her answer. For if that answer was not what he desired it would be better to ride straight down into the Loire and let the last male of the House of Nérac put an end to it for ever.

Twinkling lights began to shine in the great château; its towers and gables insolent in the majesty of their beauty, strong in the might of their antiquity, challenged and defied him in the dusk. That was the château of his Denise, the Marquise de Beau Séjour whom he, gallant fool, rich only in his noble pedigree, dared to love and hoped to win, Denise the richest heiress in France. Yet it had not been hers so long; its broad seignories were a thing of yesterday for her. Fifteen years ago she, as he, had been only the child of a vicomte as poor if as noble as himself. And Beau Séjour lay not here, but ten leagues away, a mile from Nérac, where that church spire hung its cross above the horizon.

The soft gloom of the growing dusk imaged for André at that moment the sombre pall of tragedy which twelve years ago had fallen on the great château. An ancient house, a venerated name had been its owner’s; were not their achievements written in the chronicles of France? was not their origin lost in the twilight of dim ages far, so far away? Capets and Valois and Bourbons that house had seen coming and going on the throne, honour and fame and wealth and high endeavour had been theirs, and then shame and doom, swift, unexpected, irreversible. The story of their downfall had been his first lesson learned in budding manhood of the harshness of the world and the mystery of fate. Such a simple story, too. The wife of the Marquis had run away with a lover, a baseborn stranger gossip called him. The lover had deserted her, why and where no one knew, and disowned by her husband she had died miserably. Her husband, a soldier and ambassador of the great Louis Quatorze, had in despair or madness plunged into treason, and had paid the traitor’s penalty on the scaffold. His only son and heir, from remorse or consciousness of guilt, had perished by his own hand in Poland, whither he had gone to fight in the war. And here to-day at his feet a rough and stained tombstone marked the neglected grave of the only daughter who had remained. Had she lived she would to-night have been just two years older than Denise; had there been no treason, she and not Denise would have been mistress of that château now called De Beau Séjour.

Denise’s father for service to the state had been awarded the lands of the traitor; the old name for centuries noted in this soil had been annulled in infamy; its blood was corrupted by the decree of the law, and by the King’s will the new Marquis had carried to his new possessions the title of his old, that Beau Séjour yonder so near to his own Nérac. The law and the King so far as in them lay had determined that the very name and memory of the ancient house should be blotted out for ever. But blot out the château they could not. There it stood haughty as of old, to tell to all what had once been, and the curious could still read here and there in its storied walls the arms and emblems, the scutcheons and shields of a family which had given nine Marshals to France, and in whose veins royal blood had flowed. What did that matter now? To-day it belonged to Denise, once poor as he was, and destined to be his bride before this sudden swoop upward on the ruins of another to the high places of France.

As André paced to and fro in the dusk the ghostly memories thickened. Twenty years ago as a boy he had ridden with his father to that château. He remembered but two things, but he remembered them as vividly as yesterday. Over the chief gateway a splendid coat of arms had caught his boyish fancy and he had asked what the motto “Dieu Le Vengeur” might mean. “Why, father, there it is again,” he had cried, for in the noble hall, above the famous sculptured chimney-piece, the first thing that caught the boy’s eye was the scroll with those three words “Dieu Le Vengeur.” And the second memory was of a little girl playing with a huge wolf-hound in the dancing firelight under that motto, a little girl with blue eyes and fair hair, innocent of the evil to come, playing in her hall which had seen kings and queens for guests. “Dieu Le Vengeur” she had repeated—“God will protect me,” and they had all laughed. But had God protected her? Here was her grave at his feet. André now recalled his dying father’s remark five years later, when he had heard how his neighbour the Comte de Beau Séjour had been rewarded with the treason-tainted marquisate. “That would have been yours, André, my son,” he had said. And no one had understood, and he had died before he could explain, if explain he could. That, too, had been another bitter lesson in the cruelty of fate, in the bleak, bitter tragedy of baffled and unfulfilled ambitions.

Smitten with a sudden pity, a sharp anguish, André kneeled in the damp, tangled grass and peered at the tombstone which marked the humble resting-place of the dead, worse than dead, dishonoured and infamous. “Marie Angélique Jeanne Gabrielle ...” the rest was eaten away. But in the church close by lay the coffins of her ancestors, the crusaders and nobles, and Marshals of France. The names had been obliterated. But not even a wronged king had dared to remove the tombs with which that church was eloquent of the glories that had once been theirs. Yes, they lay there of right, but she, little Marie, cradled in splendour, who had prattled of “Dieu Le Vengeur,” she, the daughter of a wanton and a traitor, lay here in the rain, and the sheep and the goats browsed over her, and the sabots of those once her serfs and tenants made an insulting path over her grave. And up there another reigned in her place.

A traitor! Yes, his daughter deserved her fate. There should be no mercy for traitors.

“What seek you, Monsieur le Vicomte?”

He started at the question. It was the Chevalier de St. Amant, boyish, insolent, though his tone was strangely soft.

“I was finding a lesson,” André replied quietly.

“In a tombstone?”

André explained. The Chevalier seemed impressed, for he went down on his knees and peered for some minutes at the weather-beaten stone.

“Poor child!” he muttered. “Poor child!”

André was thinking the Chevalier was better than he had supposed, but his next action jarred harshly. Standing carelessly on the stone he gathered his cloak about him. “Ah, well,” he remarked, with his dare-devil lightness, “it is perhaps more fortunate for you or me that little Marie is where she is.”

“For you or me?” André questioned, peering into his young face.

“The Marquise awaits you, Vicomte,” he twitched his thumb towards the château, “perhaps you will understand better when you have seen her,” and with a careless tip of his saucy hat he strode away.

For one minute André burned to seize that cloak and speak to him very straightly. “Pah!” he muttered, “it will do later. Perhaps it will not be necessary at all.”

But it was with increased misgiving that he rode up to the château.

Denise received him in the great hall, unconsciously reproducing the picture which was burnt into André’s memory, for she stood with a certain sweet stateliness by the sculptured chimney-piece and a huge hound lay at her feet. Above her head the emblazoned scutcheon of the old house still adorned the noble carving—indeed you could not have destroyed the one without destroying the other—and the glad firelight which threw such subtly entrancing shadows on the dress and girlish figure of the young Marquise seemed to point with tongues of flame to that sublime motto, “Dieu Le Vengeur!” above her head.

André bowed and halted. Ambition, passion, and hope conspired to choke him for the moment. How fair and noble she was! yes, surpassingly fair and noble.

Denise said nothing. She stared at the buckle of her slipper.

“I have come for my answer,” he said, in a low voice.

She met his pleading eyes fearlessly. “The answer is, ‘No,’” she replied, and her voice, too, was low, as if she could not trust it.

“No?” he repeated, half stunned.

She simply bowed her head.

“You mean it? Oh, Denise, you cannot mean it?”

“I have reflected and I mean it.”

“For always?”

“Yes.”

André stepped nearer. “I do not remind you, Denise,” he said, speaking with a composure won by a mighty mastery of himself, “that I love you, that I have loved you since I could love any woman. If you would not believe it before I was taken prisoner, when I spoke in the woods of Versailles, you would not believe it now. Nor do I remind you that twelve months ago you spoke very differently. A lover and a gentleman does not speak of these things when the answer has been ‘No.’ But I do ask you, before you say ‘No,’ always to remember that it was the wish of your dead father and of mine that the answer should be ‘Yes.’”

“My father died five years ago, yours even longer,” she answered.

“Do the years alter their wish?” he asked, with a touch of passion, “do they make a promise, good faith, honour, less a promise, less——”

“There was no promise,” she interrupted.

He bowed calmly. The gesture was better than speech.

“And your reason, Denise?”

“I said I would give you an answer, I did not undertake to give reasons.”

“Certainly. May I plead, however, that perhaps, remembering the past, what you and I have been to each other since childhood, I have some right to ask?”

She placed her fan on the shelf of the chimney with sharp decision. The firelight flashed in her grey eyes. “I refuse,” she said, very distinctly, “to marry a man who does not love me.”

“Then you do not believe my words?” he questioned quickly.

“You are a noble, André,” she answered; “the courtesy of a noble and a gentleman requires that when he demands a woman’s hand in marriage he should profess to love her. For the honour you have done me I thank you, but a woman finds the proof not in words but in deeds. You are a brave soldier, but you do not love me. That is enough.”

“No, it is not enough for me,” he answered.

“Very well.” She took a step forward. “I had no desire to discuss things not fit for a girl to speak of to a man who has done her the honour to ask her hand in marriage, and I would have spared both myself and you unnecessary pain. Plainly then and briefly, when I take a husband I do not choose to share what he professes is his love with any other woman. That is my reason and my answer in one.”

A flush darkened his sallow cheek. “It is not true,” he protested passionately, “it is not true.”

“You would deny it?” she cried, passion too leaping into her voice. “Is that letter to the Comtesse des Forges, one of my friends—my friends, mon Dieu!—yours, or is it not?” She handed it to him with hot scorn.

“It was written twelve months ago,” he said, somewhat lamely.

“And the duel which it caused is twelve months ago, too, I suppose? The right arm of her husband the Comte des Forges is healed, but the wound—my God! the wound in his heart and mine, that you can never heal. And she is not alone. Does not Paris ring with the gallantries of the Vicomte de Nérac? For aught I know there may be a dozen husbands in England who have lost their sword arm because André de Nérac professed to love their wives.” She checked herself and was calm again. “I thank you for the honour you have done me, but—” she offered him the stateliest, coldest curtsey, “Vicomte, I am your servant.”

She would have escaped by the door behind her, but André intercepted her. “No,” he said, “you do not leave me yet. I, too, have something to say and you, Marquise, will be pleased to hear it.”

Their eyes met and then Denise walked back to her place by the fireplace. She was trembling now, and she no longer looked him in the face.

“As to the past,” he said in a low voice, “I say nothing, for I deserve your reproaches. I have been foolish, wicked, unworthy of you. But there is no noble to-day at Versailles of whom the same could not be said. Men are men, and I have never concealed from you what I have been. But such things do not destroy love. They cannot and they never will, and every woman knows it. My past, I assert, is not your reason.”

“What then is?” she asked proudly.

“I am poor, you are rich, but that is not the reason, either. Do not think I would dishonour you by supposing that I believed that, though some whom you call your friends say it is. No, the reason is that while I have been away, a prisoner, defenceless, silent, some one—” he paused, “some one has been poisoning your mind, some one who hopes to take the place——”

“Take care——” she interrupted.

“You speak of the gossip of Paris. I will not tell you what the gossip of Paris and Versailles says, for you will hear it and more fitly from other lips than mine. But I say, that poisoner will answer to me.”

She was about to speak, but checked herself.

“And I will tell you why. First because I love you and I love no one else. You do not believe it. You ask for deeds, not words. In the future you shall have them. And second, because you, Denise, love me, yes, love me.”

“Have done, have done with this mockery!” she cried.

“Tell me,” was his answer, “on your word of honour, that it is not so, tell me that you do not love me and never will, tell me that you love another and on my word as a gentleman I will never speak of love to you again.”

Dead silence. André waited quietly.

“I refuse,” she said, slowly, picking the words, “to be questioned in this manner. But as you insist, I repeat—I do not love you.”

André bowed. “One word more, Denise, if you please,” he said, “one word and I leave your presence for ever.”

She drew herself up. “Yes,” she said, “leave me for ever.” But for all that she, as he, seemed spellbound to the spot.

André deliberately drew from his pocket the letter that she had thrown in his teeth and faced her. “Thank you,” he said, very calmly. “Now that I know you mean what you said, I, too, know what I must do.” He walked away.

“Give me that letter,” she said with a swift flash of command. “It belongs to me.”

“Pardon,” he answered, quietly, “yesterday the Comte des Forges was killed by a friend of his whose honour he had betrayed. The letter belongs to the lady to whom it was written, the lady who will be the Vicomtesse de Nérac.”

A faint cry escaped from Denise’s lips. For the moment she leaned faint against the chimney-piece, white and sick.

André looked at her, but he made no effort to offer her either sympathy or help. Then he walked back, Denise watching him, and flung the letter into the fire. Denise started, but she said nothing, though her great grey eyes were eloquent with half a dozen questions.

“The letter has served its purpose,” André said. “Adieu, Marquise!”

“What does this—this trickery mean?” she demanded, hotly.

“You must forgive one who loves you,” was the calm reply, “for love laughs at tricks. The Comte des Forges is alive and well: he has a wound in his shoulder which is only a scratch, for the poor Comte is always believing that some one is betraying his honour and Madame the Comtesse has a fickle heart. Yesterday I was his second, so I know.”

“Then—then—” she cried and stopped.

André bowed most courteously. “You refused to believe me, Mademoiselle: I returned the compliment and refused to believe you—and I proved it by a lover’s trick, if you choose to call it such. That is all, but it is enough.”

“Ah!” She crumpled up the fan in speechless indignation.

“No, Denise,” he said softly. “I shall not trouble you now or soon, but—” he had caught her hand—“you shall yet be mine, I swear it. You think you do not love me, but you shall be convinced—you shall.”

He kissed her fingers with a tender reverence. “Adieu, Marquise! I go to my duty and revenge,” he said, and he left her there under the spell of his mastery, with her boar-hound at her feet, and the flames of fire pointing to the motto “Dieu Le Vengeur!”