The marquise cast one slow glance of dumb remonstrance at Clovis, who was shifting from one foot to the other, guiltily, and shaking herself free from the exuberant Aglaé, left the room with Toinon. Her strange reception by the latter was fully explained. Her foster-sister had believed that she was sufficiently unstable of purpose herself to have summoned the evil spirit that had been exorcised; it had not entered the girl's head that the men could have dared secretly to play such a trick upon her patience. What was their motive for the proceeding? Did the woman wield an occult power over the marquis such as forced him to obey her will even from a distance? Did she hold him in such abject thraldom that he really could not get on without her? The abbé had been the acting party in the arrangement. Had he re-introduced the bugbear merely to distress his sister-in-law, and display his malignant spleen? Such speculations as these passed vaguely through Gabrielle's dizzy brain as she stared aimlessly from her bedroom window into the courtyard, mechanically counting the big familiar stones which composed the opposite wall, surveying the iron-bound postern door with its complicated locks and bolts. Toinon watched her mistress with growing ire as she bustled hither and thither arranging the details of the toilet. Though scarce conceivable it was true--she could perceive it in every mournful line on the gloomy face of the marquise--that these bad men had deliberately done behind her back that which they knew to be most abhorrent to the gentle chatelaine; and she the one to whom they owed every earthly comfort! By so mad a stroke they had overreached themselves, for, of course, madame would resent the intolerable insolence--order the woman off with contumely--send the men packing. Toinon was aware of the late maréchal's testamentary dispositions; was thankful now to remember that it rested with her mistress alone to turn out the ex-governess as well as the chevalier and the abbé; and it somewhat nettled the faithful abigail that she should not at once have shown a proper spirit, and have abruptly closed the situation. The marquis looked just now so shamefaced that a few indignant words would have brought him to a sense of his wickedness. Whether there were or not guilty relations between the marquis and mademoiselle, was beside the point. The latter had by her fiendish behaviour well-nigh driven the marquise out of the world, and here she was playing the affectionate friend with exaggerated pantomime. It was disgusting. Madame being much too good, would perhaps give her shelter till the morrow, instead of expelling her into the night; but madame must rise in the morning with a firm resolve to make them all understand that she was mistress.