At sight of Garnache she stood still, set her hand on her heart, and uttered a low cry. Was it indeed Garnache she saw—Garnache, her brave knight-errant? He looked no longer as he had looked during those days when he had been her gaoler; but he looked as she liked to think of him since she had accounted him dead. He advanced to meet her, a smile in his eyes that had something wistful in it. He held out both hands to her, and she took them, and there, under the eyes of all, before he could snatch them away, she had stooped and kissed them, whilst a murmur of "Thank God! Thank God!" escaped from her lips to heaven.
"Mademoiselle, mademoiselle!" he remonstrated, when it was too late to stay her. "You must not; it is not seemly in me to allow it."
He saw in the act no more than an expression of the gratitude for what he had done to serve her, and for the risk in which his life had been so willingly placed in that service. Under the suasion of his words she grew calm again; then, suddenly, a fear stirred her once more in that place where she had known naught but fears.
"Why are you here, monsieur? You have come into danger again?"
"No, no," he laughed. "These are my own men at least, for the time being. I am come in power this time, to administer justice. What shall be done with this lady, mademoiselle?" he asked; and knowing well the merciful sweetness of the girl's soul, he added, "Speak, now. Her fate shall rest in your hands."
Valerie looked at her enemy, and then her eyes strayed round the room and took stock of the men standing there in silence, of the Abbot who still remained at the table-head, a pale, scarce-interested spectator of this odd scene.
The change had come so abruptly. A few minutes ago she had been still a prisoner, suffering tortures at having heard that Marius was to return that day, and that, willy-nilly, she must wed him now. And now she was free it seemed: her champion was returned in power, and he stood bidding her decide the fate of her late oppressors.
Madame's face was ashen. She judged the girl by her own self; she had no knowledge of any such infinite sweetness as that of this child's nature, a sweetness that could do no hurt to any. Death was what the Marquise expected, since she knew that death would she herself have pronounced had the positions been reversed. But—
"Let her go in peace, monsieur," she heard mademoiselle say, and she could not believe but that she was being mocked. And as if mockery were at issue, Garnache laughed.
"We will let her go, mademoiselle—yet not quite her own way. You must not longer remain unrestrained, madame," he told the Marquise. "Natures such as yours need a man's guidance. I think you will be sufficiently punished if you wed this rash Monsieur de Tressan, just as he will be sufficiently punished later when disillusionment follows his present youthful ardour. Make each other happy, then," and he waved his arms from one to the other. "Our good Father, here, will tie the knot at once, and then, my Lord Seneschal, you may bear home your bride. Her son shall follow you."
But the Marquise blazed out now. She stamped her foot, and her eyes seemed to have taken fire.
"Never, sir! Never in life!" she cried. "I will not be so constrained. I am the Marquise de Condillac, monsieur. Do not forget it!"
"I am hardly in danger of doing that. It is because I remember it that I urge you to change your estate with all dispatch; and cease to be the Marquise de Condillac. That same Marquise has a heavy score against her. Let her evade payment by this metamorphosis. I have opened for you, madame, a door through which you may escape."
"You are insolent," she told him. "By God, sir! I am no baggage to be disposed of by the will of any man."
At that Garnache himself took fire. Her anger proved as the steel smiting the flint of his own nature, and one of his fierce bursts of blazing passion whirled about her head.
"And what of this child, here?" he thundered. "What of her, madame? Was she a baggage to be disposed of by the will of any man or woman? Yet you sought to dispose of her against her heart, against her nature, against her plighted word. Enough said!" he barked, and so terrific was his mien and voice that the stout-spirited Dowager was cowed, and recoiled as he advanced a step in her direction. "Get you married. Take you this man to husband, you who with such calmness sought to drive others into unwilling wedlock. Do it, madame, and do it now, or by the Heaven above us, you shall come to Paris with me, and you'll not find them nice there. It will avail you little to storm and shout at them that you are Marquise de Condillac. As a murderess and a rebel shall you be tried, and as both or either it is odds you will be broken on the wheel—and your son with you. So make your choice, madame."
He ceased. Valerie had caught him by the arm. At once his fury fell from him. He turned to her.
"What is it, child?"
"Do not compel her, if she will not wed him," said she. "I know—and—she did not—how terrible a thing it is."
"Nay, patience, child," he soothed her, smiling now, his smile as the sunshine that succeeds a thunderstorm.
"It is none so bad with her. She is but coy. They had plighted their troth already, so it seems. Besides, I do not compel her. She shall marry him of her own free will—or else go to Paris and stand her trial and the consequences."
"They had plighted their troth, do you say?"
"Well—had you not, Monsieur le Seneschal?"
"We had, monsieur," said Tressan, with conscious pride; "and for myself I am ready for these immediate nuptials."
"Then, in God's name, let Madame give us her answer now. We have not the day to waste."
She stood looking at him, her toe tapping the ground, her eyes sullenly angry. And in the end, half-fainting in her great disdain, she consented to do his will. Paris and the wheel formed too horrible an alternative; besides, even if that were spared her, there was but a hovel in Touraine for her, and Tressan, for all his fat ugliness, was wealthy.
So the Abbot, who had lent himself to the mummery of coming there to read a burial service, made ready now, by order of the Queen's emissary, to solemnize a wedding.
It was soon done. Fortunio stood sponsor for Tressan, and Garnache himself insisted upon handing the Lord Seneschal his bride, a stroke of irony which hurt the proud lady of Condillac more than all her sufferings of the past half-hour.
When it was over and the Dowager Marquise de Condillac had been converted into the Comtesse de Tressan, Garnache bade them depart in peace and at once.
"As I have promised, you shall be spared all prosecution, Monsieur de Tressan," he assured the Seneschal at parting. "But you must resign at once the King's Seneschalship of Dauphiny, else will you put me to the necessity of having you deprived of your office—and that might entail unpleasant consequences."
They went, madame with bowed head, her stubborn pride broken at last as the Abbot of Saint Francis had so confidently promised her. After them went the Abbot and the lackeys of Florimond, and Fortunio went with these to carry out Garnache's orders that the men of the Dowager's garrison be sent packing at once, leaving with the Parisian, in the great hall, just Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye.
CHAPTER XXIV. SAINT MARTIN'S EVE
Uneasy in his mind, seeking some way to tell the thing and acquit himself of the painful task before him, Garnache took a turn in the apartment.
Mademoiselle leaned against the table, which was still burdened by the empty coffin, and observed him. His ponderings were vain; he could find no way to tell, his story. She had said that she did not exactly love this Florimond, that her loyalty to him was no more than her loyalty to her father's wishes. Nevertheless, he thought, what manner of hurt must not her pride receive when she learned that Florimond had brought him home a wife? Garnache was full of pity for her and for the loneliness that must be hers hereafter, mistress of a vast estate in Dauphiny, alone and friendless. And he was a little sorry for himself and the loneliness which, he felt, would be his hereafter; but that was by the way.