"Then for that the greater need to heed what you say!" he replied. "Wives that come empty-handed to husbands that ask them not had best be silent and be patient! Or in a very little time they creep as low as before they went high! You beautiful fool!" he continued, in a tone of mingled rage and admiration, "to do this in haste and forget I could punish at leisure! To do me ill, ay, to ruin me, and forget that henceforth my pleasure must be yours, my will your rule! My wife, say you?" with increasing bitterness. "Ay! And therefore my creature, helpless as the scullion I send to the scourge, or the trooper I hang up by the heels for sleeping! You--you----" and with a movement as fierce as it was sudden he grasped her wrist and twisted her round forcibly so that her eyes at close quarters looked into his. "Do you not yet repent? Do you not begin to see that in tricking the Captain of Vlaye you have made your master?" She could have screamed with pain, for the bones of her slender wrist seemed to be cracking in his cruel grip--but she knew that in her courage, and in that only, lay her one hope. "I know this," she replied hardily, forcing herself to meet his eyes without flinching, "that you mistake! I do not come empty--or I had not come," with pride. "I bring you that will save you--if you treat me well. But if you hold me so----" "What will you do?" savagely. "Release me and I will tell you," she answered. "I shall not fly. And if I say nothing to the purpose, I shall still be in your power." He yielded, moved in secret by her spirit. "Well," he said, "speak! But let it be to the purpose, madam, that is all." "Said I not it should be to the purpose?" she answered, her eyes bright. "And I keep my word, if you do not. Tell me, sir, frankly, what had that child, that doll"--bitterly--"to put in the scales against me? Beauty?" "Nay!" "A skin as white as mine or arms as round?" She held them out to him. "Or brighter eyes? You have looked in mine often enough and sworn you loved me, sworn that you would do me no wrong! You should know them-- and hers!" "It was none of these." "Her birth? Nay, but she is no better born than I am! A Rochechouart is what a Villeneuve was. Her rank? No. Then what was it?" "No one thing," he answered drily. "But five hundred things." "Spears?" "You are quick-witted. Spears." "And her manors also, I suppose?" with contempt. "Her lordships here and there! Her farms and castles in Poitou and the Limousin and Beauce and the Dordogne! Her mills in the Bourbonnais and her fishings in Sologne!" "Not one of these!" "No?"