“Have a care how you approach him.  He is as cunning as a fox, and as crafty as he is cruel.  He always has some weapon beneath his robe.  Have a care, I say, how you approach him.”

Gaston nodded, but he was too fearless by nature to pay much heed to the warning; he felt himself more than a match for that bowed-down old man.  Giving Constanza into Raymond’s charge, he stepped boldly up to the dais, and doffing his headpiece, addressed himself to his adversary in firm though courteous accents.

“My Lord of Navailles,” he said, “I am come to claim mine own.  If thou knowest me not, I will tell thee who I am —­ Gaston de Brocas, the Lord of Saut in mine own right, and by the mandate of the King which I hold in mine hand.  Long hast thou held lands to which thou hadst no right, but the day has come when I claim mine own again, and am prepared to do battle for it to the death.  But here is no battle needed.  Thine own men have called me lord; they have obeyed the mandate of the King, and have opened their gates to me.  I stand here the Lord of Saut.  Thy power and thy reign are over for ever.  Grossly hast thou abused that power when it was thine.  Now, like all tyrants, thou art finding that thy servants fall away in the hour of peril, and that thou, who hast been a cruel master, canst command no service from them in the time of need.  I, and I alone, am Lord of Saut.  Hast thou aught to say ere thou yieldest dominion to me?”

Did he understand?  Those standing round and breathlessly watching the curious scene could scarce be sure; but there was a look of comprehension and of intense baffled rage and malice in those cavernous eyes that sent a shiver through Constanza’s light frame.

“Have a care, Gaston; have a care!” she cried, with sudden shrillness, as she saw a quick movement of those knotted sinewy hands beneath the coarse robe the old man wore; and in another moment both she and Raymond had sprung forward, for there was a flash of keen steel, and the madman had flung himself upon Gaston with inconceivable rapidity of motion.

For a moment there was a hideous scuffle.  Blood was flowing, they knew not whose.  Gaston acted solely on the defensive.  He would not raise his hand against one who was old and lunatic, and near in blood to her whom he held dear; but he wrestled valiantly in the iron grip of arms stronger than his own, and he felt that some struggle was going on above him, though for the moment his own breath seemed suspended, and his very life pressed out of him.

Then came a sudden sense of release.  His enemy had relaxed his bear-like clasp.  Gaston sprang to his feet to see his enemy falling backwards in a helpless collapse, the hilt of a dagger clasped between his knotted hands —­ the sharp blade buried in his own heart.

“He has killed himself!” cried Constanza, with eyes dilated with horror, as she sprang to Gaston’s side.  It had all been so quick that it was hard to tell what had befallen in those few seconds of life-and-death struggle.  Gaston was bleeding from a slight flesh wound in the arm, but that was the only hurt he had received; whilst his foe —­