"And I," said St. Genis, "was churlish enough to refuse. I would not have come now only that I felt I might be in time to avert the most awful catastrophe that has yet fallen upon your house." Again his restless, dark eyes--sullen and wrathful and charged with a look of rage and of hate--wandered over the assembled company. The look frightened the ladies. They took to clinging to one another, standing in compact little groups together, like frightened birds, watchful and wide-eyed. They feared that the young man was mad. But the men exchanged significant glances and significant smiles. They merely thought that St. Genis had been drinking, or that jealousy had half-turned his brain. Only Clyffurde, who stood somewhat apart from the others, knew--by some unexplainable intuition--what it was that had brought Maurice de St. Genis to this house in this excited state and at this hour. He felt excited too, and mightily thankful that the catastrophe would be brought about by others--not by himself. But all his thoughts were for Crystal, and an instinctive desire to stand by her and to shield her if necessary from some unknown or unguessed evil, made him draw nearer to her. She stood on the fringe of the little crowd--as isolated as Bobby was himself. De Marmont--whose face had become the colour of dead ashes--had left her side: one step at a time and very slowly he was getting nearer and nearer to St. Genis, as if the latter's wrath-filled eyes were drawing him against his will. At the young man's ominous words, M. le Comte's sunken cheeks grew a shade more pale. "What catastrophe, _mon Dieu!_" he exclaimed, "could fall on my house that would be worse than twenty years of exile?" "An alliance with a traitor, M. le Comte," said St. Genis firmly. A gasp went round the room, a sigh, a cry. The women looked in mute horror from one man to the other, the men already had their right hand on their swords. But Clyffurde's eyes were fixed upon Crystal, who pale, silent, rigid as a marble statue, with lips parted and nostrils quivering, stood not five paces away from him, her dilated eyes wandering ceaselessly from the face of St. Genis to that of de Marmont and thence to that of her father. But beyond that look of tense excitement she revealed nothing of what she thought and felt. Already de Marmont--his hand upon his sword--had advanced menacingly towards St. Genis. "M. le Marquis," he said between set teeth, "you will, by God! eat those words, or----" "Eat my words, man?" retorted St. Genis with a harsh laugh. "By Heaven! have I not come here on purpose to throw my words into your lying face?" There was a brief but violent skirmish, for de Marmont had made a movement as if he meant to spring at his rival's throat, and Général Marchand and the Vicomte de Génevois, who happened to be near, had much ado to seize and hold him: even so they could not stop the hoarse cries which he uttered: