"I loved Sun Woman," Pierre stammered. "For him to speak of her so--to speak so of our love--" "Surely," Elysee said, "Raoul spoke in the heat of anger." "I don't take back a word," Raoul said in a hard, flat voice. But, though it was hard to read the features behind that fierce black mustache, Pierre thought he saw uncertainty in Raoul's face. As if Raoul finally understood that he had gone too far. _He drove me to try to hit him. He's never pushed me that far before._ Perhaps, Pierre thought, Raoul would now apologize. Appalled at his own words, he might seek to be reconciled. _I will make no more overtures. He meets every attempt with insults._ Pierre waited. He could see Raoul struggling within himself. Perhaps Papa's suggestion that he might lose his inheritance had made him realize what consequences a rift between them could have. _Of course, I would never disinherit Raoul. There's no one else who could manage the estate after I die. And I may be gone sooner than anyone expects._ Pierre saw Raoul's broad chest swell as he took a deep breath. Now, thought Pierre, surely Raoul was going to apologize and ask forgiveness, and they would work out some way that Sun Woman and Gray Cloud could be brought here without stirring up old hatreds. Raoul said, "Don't bring Indians into this house, Pierre, I warn you. If any Indian tries to claim he's a member of my family, I'll make him wish he had never been born at all." The pain that might one day kill him sank its teeth deep into his guts. Raoul's words seared him like a branding iron. He felt his shoulders sag. Raoul turned his back on his brother and his father, and the clump of his hard leather boot heels echoed through the great hall. "Raoul!" Elysee cried. He held his hand outstretched, as Pierre had when Raoul was about to smash the Limoges vase. Looking down at those glistening white shards scattered over the flagstones, Pierre wondered what would happen when Raoul inherited the de Marion fortune. Would he destroy it in one of his rages as he had this beautiful object that had been part of the family treasure? Or would he use its power as he used his fists and pistol and knife, to destroy others? The de Marion fortune.... Once it had been a huge tract of land in northeastern France dominated by the chateau of the Counts de Marion, held by them so long that no one knew when or how they first obtained it. Just as the origin of the de Marions themselves was something of a mystery. Converted into gold, the de Marion fortune had sailed, with Elysee, the last Count de Marion, his countess and his children, across the Atlantic. Elysee, in the early 1780s, had foreseen the bloody upheaval that would sweep away the king and the nobility of France. He had made a friend of the American ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, and had thought much about Jefferson's new nation. Their revolution was over and done with. The de Marion fortune might thrive in those United States.