"Oh, as to that," she rejoined coolly, "you may tell _ma tante_ that I have changed my mind. She did not approve of my going, did she? so I will, if I may," she added, with a sweet air of innocence, "remain at La Frontenay for a few days longer with her." "Fernande, you are an angel!" he exclaimed. And he dropped on his knee and kissed her little hand with the same fervour as he would have kissed the robe of a Madonna. His head was bent and the tears of remorse still hung upon his lashes, or else, no doubt, he would have perceived the strange, elusive smile which lingered round his beloved one's lips. V Away from Fernande's bewitching presence Laurent de Mortain was conscious once more of the gnawing pangs of jealousy, nor did his mother contrive to soothe him in any way. Madame la Marquise was terribly angered against her niece. The girl's accusing words: "And that man your son!" rang unpleasantly and insistently upon her ear. Not that fanaticism allowed her for a moment to feel compunction--let alone remorse--at what she had done, nor did she delude herself for a moment as to the probable truth of Fernande's accusations. De Puisaye's plan of seizing the La Frontenay factories through the mediation of a set of unscrupulous blackguards would certainly entail bloodshed--murder, perhaps--if, indeed, the slaughter of a dangerous enemy could be called by such an ugly name when the cause was so holy and so just. That the dangerous enemy happened to be her own son did not weigh for a moment with Madame la Marquise. Her heart and soul were wrapped up in the cause of King Louis, and if her beloved Laurent had at any time proved a traitor to it, she would have plucked him out of her heart and left him to die a traitor's death, with the stoicism of a Spartan mother sacrificing an unfit son to the general weal of her country. But though fanaticism did in so complete a manner rule her every thought and smother every one of her sensibilities, Madame did not like to hear her actions criticized, nor the callousness of her heart brought so crudely to the light of day. She was very angry with Fernande, and seeing that Laurent's jealousy had been very fully aroused by the scene which he had witnessed, she was willing to let her son be the avenger of her own offended dignity. She knew that Laurent could make his fiancee suffer acutely while he was a prey to one of his moods, and that he would find many a word wherewith to wound her as deeply as she had dared to wound his mother. "It is strange," said Madame, with a good deal of acerbity, when she was discussing with Laurent, a quarter of an hour or so later on, Fernande's inexplicable conduct of a while ago. "It is strange that she should so suddenly desire to remain at La Frontenay when not more than a couple of hours ago she was so set on going away." "What do you mean, mother?" he asked with a frown. "Do you think...?"