He was dressed in a black riding-suit, relieved only by the white neck-cloth and the tricolour sash of office about his waist. He removed his cocked hat, beneath which the hair was tied in a club with the same scrupulous care as of old.
Slowly he advanced into the salon, and his sombre eyes passed from the Marquis to Mademoiselle. As they rested upon her some of the sternness seemed to fade from their glance. He found in her a change almost as great as that which she had found in him. The lighthearted, laughing girl of nineteen, who had scorned his proffered love when he had wooed her that April morning to such disastrous purpose, was now ripened into a stately woman of three-and-twenty. He had thought his boyish passion dead and buried, and often in the years that were gone had he smiled softly to himself at the memory of his ardour, as we smile at the memory of our youthful follies. Yet now, upon beholding her again, so wondrously transformed, so tall and straight, and so superbly beautiful, he experienced an odd thrill and a weakening of the stern purpose that had brought him to Bellecour.
Then his glance moved on. A moment it rested on the supercilious, high-bred countenance of the Vicomte d'Ombreval, standing with so proprietary an air beside her, then it passed to the kindly old face of Des Cadoux, and he recalled how this gentleman had sought to stay the flogging of him. An instant it hovered on the Marquis, who - haggard of face and with his arm in a sling - was observing him with an expression in which scorn and wonder were striving for the mastery; it seemed to shun the gaze of the pale-faced Vicomte, whose tutor he had been in the old days of his secretaryship, and full and stern it returned at last to settle upon the Marquis.
"Citizen Bellecour," he said, and his voice, like his face, seemed to have changed since last the Marquis had heard it, and to have grown more deep and metallic, "you may marvel, now that you behold the Commissioner who sent a company of soldiers to rescue you and your Chateau from the hands of the mob last night, what purpose I sought to serve by extending to you a protection which none of your order merits, and you least of any, in my eyes."
"The times may have wrought sad and overwhelming changes," answered the Marquis, with cold contempt, "but it has not yet so utterly abased us that we bring ourselves to speculate upon the purposes of the rabble."
A faint crimson flush crept into Caron's sallow cheeks.
"Indeed, I see how little you have changed!" he answered bitterly.
"You are of those that will not learn, Citizen. The fault lies here," he added, tapping his head, "and it will remain until we remove the ones with the other. But now for the business that brings me," he proceeded, more briskly. "Four years ago, Citizen Bellecour, you laid your whip across my face in the woods out yonder, and when I spoke of seeking satisfaction action you threatened me with your grooms. I will not speak of your other brutalities on that same day. I will confine myself to that first affront."
"Be brief, sir,"cried the Marquis offensively. "Since you have the force to compel us to listen to you, let me beg that you will at least display the generosity of detaining us no longer than you need."
"I will be as brief as it lies within the possibility of words," answered Caron coldly. "I am come, Citizen Bellecour, to demand of you to-day the satisfaction which four years ago you refused me."
"Of me?" cried the Marquis.
