“I’m a Frenchman.  I’m a Bienville.  I can’t accept mercy.”

“But you can bestow it,” the girl cried, passionately.  “Any one would tell you that, after all that has happened—­after this—­I should be happier in sharing your life than in being shut out of it.  I appeal to you, Miss Lucilla!  I appeal to you, Diane!—­wouldn’t any woman be proud to be the wife of Raoul de Bienville after what he has done this afternoon, no matter how the world turned against him?”

“These ladies, in the goodness of their hearts, might say anything they chose; but nothing would alter their conviction that for you to be my wife would be only to add misery to mistake.”

“That’s so,” the old banker corroborated, smacking his lips, “but you wouldn’t be much worse when you’d done that than you are now; so why not just let her have her way?”

Bienville tried to speak again, but his dry lips refused to frame the words.

“Noble ... impossible ... drag you down,” came incoherently from him, when by a quick backward movement he stepped over the threshold into the semi-obscurity of the hail.

The act was so sudden that seconds had already elapsed before Marion Grimston uttered the cry that rent her like the wail of some strong, primordial creature without the power of tears.

“Raoul, come back!”

With rapid motion she glided across the room and was in the hail.

“Raoul, come back!”

She had descended the hail, and had almost reached him as he opened the door to pass out.

“Raoul, I love you!”

But the door closed as, falling against it, she sank to the floor.  Before Miss Lucilla and James van Tromp could reach her she was already losing consciousness.

XXVI

“No; stay where you are; I’ll go.”  Derek spoke with the terse command of subdued excitement, almost pushing Diane back, as she, too, attempted to go to Marion’s assistance.  She sank obediently into one of the great chairs, too dazed even for curiosity as to what was passing in the hail.  Derek closed the door behind him, and, though confused sounds of voices and shuffling feet reached her, she gave them but a dulled attention.  It was not till he came back that her stunned intelligence revived sufficiently to enable her to think.

He closed the door again, throwing himself wearily into another of the big leathern chairs.

“They’ve taken her into Lucilla’s room.  She’ll be all right now.  It was better that it should end like that.”

“I’m not so sure.  I’m afraid for him.”

“Oh, he’ll survive it.”

“You don’t know our Frenchmen.  They’re not like you, nor any of your men.  With their sensitiveness to honor and their indifference to moral right, it’s difficult for you to understand them.  I shouldn’t be surprised at anything he might do.”

“I’ll go and see him to-morrow and try to knock a little reason into him.”