He wondered at her courage, but he hid his wonder. "So be it!" he answered. And before she knew what he would be at, he struck her sharply across the cheek with the glove which he held in his hand. She recoiled with a low cry, and her cheek blazed scarlet where he had struck it. "So be it!" he continued sombrely. "The choice shall be yours, but you will come to me daily for the one or the other. If I cannot be lover, Madame, I will be master. And by this sign I will have you know it, daily, and daily remember it." She stared at him, her bosom rising and falling, in an astonishment too deep for words. But he did not heed her. He did not look at her again. He had already turned to the door, and while she looked he passed through it, he closed it behind him. And she was alone. CHAPTER XIX. IN THE ORLEANNAIS. "But you fear him?" "Fear him?" Madame St. Lo answered; and, to the surprise of the Countess, she made a little face of contempt. "No; why should I fear him? I fear him no more than the puppy leaping at old Sancho's bridle fears his tall playfellow! Or than the cloud you see above us fears the wind before which it flies!" She pointed to a white patch, the size of a man's hand, which hung above the hill on their left hand and formed the only speck in the blue summer sky. "Fear him? Not I!" And, laughing gaily, she put her horse at a narrow rivulet which crossed the grassy track on which they rode. "But he is hard?" the Countess murmured in a low voice, as she regained her companion's side. "Hard?" Madame St. Lo rejoined with a gesture of pride. "Ay, hard as the stones in my jewelled ring! Hard as flint, or the nether millstone--to his enemies! But to women? Bah! Who ever heard that he hurt a woman?" "Why, then, is he so feared?" the Countess asked, her eyes on the subject of their discussion--a solitary figure riding some fifty paces in front of them. "Because he counts no cost!" her companion answered. "Because he killed Savillon in the court of the Louvre, though he knew his life the forfeit. He would have paid the forfeit too, or lost his right hand, if Monsieur, for his brother the Marshal's sake, had not intervened. But Savillon had whipped his dog, you see. Then he killed the Chevalier de Millaud, but 'twas in fair fight, in the snow, in their shirts. For that, Millaud's son lay in wait for him with two, in the passage under the Chatelet; but Hannibal wounded one, and the others saved themselves. Undoubtedly he is feared!" she added with the same note of pride in her voice.