“Clear out, sir!  Depart!” was the response I got to that caress; but always that wicked Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, finds in the face of her relative something that assures her that she can so venture at a later time.

And as I turned away from that coldness on the part of my august relative I found a glow of warmth for my reviving in the eyes of my beautiful Gouverneur Faulkner, who held out his hand to me as I started to the door for that departure commanded me.

“Blood brothers never doubt each other, Robert,” he said to me as with one hand he grasped my right hand and laid the other on my above my bandage, over the wound Timms had given to me, which was now almost entirely healed.

With the quickness of lightning I laid my cheek against the sleeve of his coat, in exactly the caress I had given to my Uncle, the General Robert, and then did depart with an equal rapidity.

“Can you beat him, Bill?” I heard my Uncle, the General Robert, demand as I closed the door.

“Impossible,” was the answer I thought was returned.

And from that audience chamber I went quickly and alone in my good Cherry to Twin Oaks, was admitted by Bonbon, whom I instructed not in any way to allow that I be interrupted, ascended to my own apartment and seated myself in a large chair before the glowing ashes of a small fire of fragrant chip twigs, which kind Madam Kizzie had had lighted, against what she called a “May chill,” during my toilet of the morning.  Above me from the mantelshelf, that Grandmamma Carruthers looked down with her great and noble smile, while the flame in her eyes seemed to answer that in my soul as I communed with myself.

“What is it that you will now do, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye?” I asked of myself with a slight shaking of my knees in their cheviot trousers.  “It is hardly possible that you will escape from revealing your woman’s estate to this Frenchman of your own class.  Here all mistakes of a man’s estate are forgiven you and laid to the fact of your being an alien, but that Lieutenant, Count de Bourdon, will ask questions of you and perhaps has a knowledge of your relatives and friends—­indeed, must have.  Also, already that wicked Madam Whitworth entertains suspicions of you.  What is it that you will do?”

And after I had asked myself for a second time that question I sat and looked into the eyes of that Grandmamma Carruthers for many long moments and had an argument with myself; then I answered to her as I rose to my feet so that my eyes came more nearly on a level with hers: 

“No, Madam Ancestress, born of her whom not an Indian or a fierce bear could frighten away from her duty of protection to those of her affections, I will not flee.  I will stay here by the side of my Uncle, the General Robert, and my great chief, that Gouverneur Faulkner, to fight for their honor and to protect France from robbery.  Then, if I be discovered and can do no more for them, I will go