Yet the imperious nature of the other brooked not even so pointed a rebuke.  As though he had not heard, Law stepped yet a pace nearer to the woman, upon whom he now bent the blaze of his angered eyes.  He looked neither to right nor left, but visually commanded the woman until in turn her eyes sought his own.

“This woman, your Grace,” said Law, at length, “was for some time in effect my wife.  This I do not offer as matter of interest.  What I would say to your Grace is this—­she was also my slave!”

“Sirrah!” cried the regent.

“Ah, Dame!” exclaimed the Duc de Richelieu.  And even from the women about there came little murmurs of expostulation.  Indeed there might have been pity, even in this assemblage, for the agony now visible upon the brow of Mary Connynge.

“Monsieur, the wine has turned your head,” said the regent scornfully.  “You boast!”

“I boast of nothing,” cried Law, savagely, his voice now ringing with a tone none present had ever known it to assume.  “I say to you again, this woman was my slave, and that she will again do as I shall choose.  Your Grace, she would come and wipe the dust from my shoes if I should command it!  She would kneel at my feet, and beg of me, if I should command it!  Shall I prove this, your Grace?”

“Oh, assuredly!” replied the regent, with a sarcasm which now seemed his only relief.  “Assuredly, if Monsieur L’as should please.  We here in Paris are quite his humble servants.”

Law said nothing.  He stood with his biting blue eyes still fixed upon Mary Connynge, whose own eyes faltered, trying their utmost to escape from his; whose fingers, resting just lightly on the snowy Hollands of the table cloth, moved tremulously; whose limbs appeared ready to sink beneath her.

“Come, then, Mary Connynge!” cried Law at last, his teeth setting savagely together.  “Come, then, traitress and slave, and kneel before me, as you did once before!”

Then there ensued a strange and horrible spectacle.  A hush as of death fell upon the group.  Mary Connynge, trembling, halting, yet always advancing, did indeed as her master had bidden!  She passed from the head of the table, back of the chair of the regent, who stood gazing with horror in his eyes; she passed the chair of Aisse, near which Law now stood; she paused in front of him, and stood as though in a dream.  Her knees would have indeed sunk beneath her.  She drew from her bosom a silken kerchief, as though she would indeed have performed the ignoble service which had been threatened for her.  There came neither voice nor motion to those who saw this thing.  The sheer force of one strong nature, terrible in the intensity of one supreme moment—­this might have been the spell which commanded at the table of the regent.  Yet this did occur.