Complaints and grumblings had not been listened to now for over a year; the rough admonitions of a sympathetic taskmaster had given place to peremptory commands from military disciplinarians and to threats of condign punishment at the slightest sign of discontent. It would take many weeks of untiring patience and firmness to re-establish the happy concord which reigned in the foundries and armament works a year ago. As for the powder factories, de Maurel was compelled to reserve judgment as to where real grievances began and slackness and covert rebellion ended. Leroux, suave and obsequious, at once aroused his distrust, but the War Office representatives, when they left, had given the man an excellent character, both for trustworthiness and for industry, and de Maurel was not the man to act on mere intuition. Intuition had played him such a damnable trick a while ago when he would have staked his soul on the loyalty of a pair of blue eyes! Mathurin certainly struck a note of warning, but he found his master so unapproachable, that he dared not say much, and old Gaston had long since been too feeble to see anything that was going on. Of Madame la Marquise up at La Frontenay he could glean but little information. M. le Marquis had been absent a great deal during the year with M. de Courson, and Mademoiselle Fernande had remained with her aunt during the absence of M. le Marquis; but neither she nor Madame had done more than pay the one visit to the foundries as the orders of the War Office authorities were very peremptory on that point. The ladies were seldom seen outside the limits of the chateau; they had dismissed all the servants whom Vardenne had engaged for them locally, and replaced them gradually by importations of their own. It was generally understood in the district that Mademoiselle de Courson was now formally affianced to M. le Marquis de Mortain. III It was on the day following the council of war at La Frontenay that Ronnay de Maurel started out soon after dawn for one of his favourite tramps across the moors and through the woods. Before he went away last July he had left very strict orders that no one should henceforth be allowed to wander in the La Frontenay woods. The explanation was given that valuable game was being preserved there, and one of old Gaston's last efforts at administering his nephew's property was to establish in accordance with Ronnay's express instructions, a veritable army of keepers in the district, with discretionary powers to warn every trespasser off the forbidden grounds. De Maurel, therefore, when he started off on that exquisite June morning to re-visit the place where he had suffered the most terrible mental torture which heart of man could endure, felt confident that he would remain secure from intrusion; that, above all, he need not fear a rencontre which would inevitably reopen the burning wound which time had not even begun to heal.