That Ronnay de Maurel was by this time deeply in love with Fernande no one could fail to see. Madame la Marquise chose to pooh-pooh the idea only because she was afraid of Laurent's outbursts of jealousy, which would thwart all her carefully laid plans before she had put them into execution. Laurent, of a truth, was almost beside himself during these days; even though Fernande soothed his jealous temper with more soft words and more endearing ways than she had been wont to bestow on him in the past. Though the young man suffered acutely all the while that he knew de Maurel to be in Fernande's company, she very quickly sent him into paradise the moment the ogre was out of the way. "I am working for King and country," the young girl would say, with a kind of dreamy exultation, whenever--after the departure of de Maurel--she had to endure one of Laurent's outbursts of insensate rage. "Think you that it is a pleasure to me to be in daily contact with such an odious creature? Bah! meseems when I speak with him that I can see the spectre of our martyred King and Queen calling to me to avenge them! Surely," she added reproachfully, "if I can endure the looks, the touch, the propinquity of the traitor, if I can bear the thought that he actually dares to sully me with his love, you, Laurent, might for the sake of our cause try to keep your unwarrantable jealousy in check." "How can I?" exclaimed Laurent vehemently, "when I know that the man has dared to make love to you...." "Nay, he has not yet done that, dear Laurent," broke in Fernande thoughtfully. "But you mean to allow him to make love to you when the fancy seizes him!" he retorted angrily. "Indeed I do. I have a wager on it with you. Have I not said that the bear would dance to my piping?" "He doth that quite enough already. And I'll release you of that wager, Fernande." Flushed with wrath, wretched with maddening jealousy, he drew nearer to the girl, and with a brusque movement seized her in his arms. "Fernande," he cried, "you torture me...." She looked up at him--there certainly was a look of acute suffering in his young face. She disengaged herself from his arms and said gently: "Poor Laurent! If it were not that we have need of the man and that _ma tante_ sets such great store by La Frontenay, I would turn my back on him for ever to-morrow." But he was not satisfied, even though she had spoken with singular vehemence, and his misery wrung from him a last passionate appeal: "You do not love him, Fernande?" For a moment or two she stood quite still, her eyes fixed on the distance, far away where lay the woods of La Frontenay--a dark green patch on the lower slope of the hills; then she turned slowly and looked calmly into Laurent de Mortain's glowering eyes. "I hate him," she replied. IV