Ronnay had never been her child. As a tiny baby he was already the image of his father--with the same wilful and tyrannical temper, the same outbursts of passionate wrath, the same characteristic toss of the head that shook recalcitrant curls from the low, square forehead. Ronnay had his father's auburn hair, his father's deep-set eyes, which at times were almost black, at others of a deep violet-blue; he had his father's massive limbs and square-set jaw. Oh, yes! Ronnay was a true de Maurel. Not all the upbringing in the world, not all a mother's influence, would have trained the lad to walk in the footsteps of his aristocratic forbears. The word "democrat" was already writ plainly upon the sturdy form of the tiny child, as he toddled, unaided, through the sheds of his father's foundries, scorning the delicate feminine hands of nurse or governess, who would have guided his footsteps, clinging to the overseers and the roughly-clad workmen, who placed their tools in his little hands and showed him the way to use them. The spirit of democracy shone out of the lad's blue eyes when, standing between his Uncle Gaston's knees, he listened spellbound to marvellous tales of the tyranny of kings and of the heroic stand which was even then being made in the New World over the ocean far away by a nation which was resolved to be free. Yes, Ronnay de Maurel was, indeed, a true son of his father--a worthy nephew of Gaston de Maurel and the godson of La Fayette; he had nothing of the de Coursons in him. And in the years that ensued, when Gaston had voted for the death of his King and Ronnay had won his first laurels under the base-born Corsican adventurer fighting against his own kith and kin and against the King's most holy Majesty, Denise de Mortain--as she now was--often wished that some beneficent Fate had smothered her first-born at birth. III Mme. la Marquise roused herself from her meditations. There had been silence between her and her brother for some time, while her mind took this sudden incursion into the past; but at the further end of the room Fernande de Courson and Laurent de Mortain were whispering and laughing together. Madame turned and looked over her shoulder at the two young people; then she said abruptly and with seeming irrelevance to her brother: "Fernande is getting too old for all that childishness." "Childishness, my dear," said the Comte, somewhat bewildered at this sudden change in his sister's train of thought. "I don't understand...." "You can't wish her to become the butt of all the gossips in the village ... which she will do if you allow this childish philandering to go on." "You mean Laurent?" he queried blankly. "Why--of course. Fernande is seventeen--Laurent has not a sou to bless himself with...." "For the moment," interposed the Comte. "When King Louis comes into his own again, Laurent will retake possession of his heritage...." Madame la Marquise shook her head impatiently.