A sinister smile quivered upon the thin lips of the Counsellor.

“Why do you say horrible?” asked he; “the dog had shown symptoms of rabies, and had he bitten me, I might have expired in frightful torture.  Was it not fair self-defence?  Sometimes, however, a man is more dangerous than a dog.  A man blights the whole of my life; I strike him down openly, and the law convicts me and puts me to death; but I do not contemplate doing so, for I would suppress such a man secretly.”

Diana placed her hands on the man’s mouth and stopped a further exposition of his ideas.

“Listen to me,” said she.  But at this moment a heavy step was heard outside.  “It is Norbert,” gasped she.

“Impossible!  It is more likely his father.”

“It is Norbert,” cried Mademoiselle de Laurebourg, and snatching the little bottle from the Counsellor’s hands, she thrust it into her bosom.  The door flew open, and Norbert appeared on the threshold.  Diana and the Counsellor both uttered a shriek of terror.  His livid countenance seemed to indicate that he had passed through some terrible scene; his gait was unsteady, his clothes torn and disordered, and his face stained with blood, which had flowed from a cut over his temple.  Daumon imagined that some outrage had taken place.

“You have been wounded, Marquis?” said he.

“Yes, my father struck me.”

“Can it be possible?”

“Yes, he struck me.”

Mademoiselle Diana had feared this, and she trembled with the terror of her vague conjectures as she made a step towards her lover.

“Permit me to examine your wound,” said she.

She placed both her hands at the side of his head and stood on tip-toe, the better to inspect the cut.  As she did so, she shuddered; an inch lower, and the consequences might have been fatal.

“Quick,” she said, “give me some rags and water.”

Norbert gently disengaged himself.  “It is a mere nothing,” said he, “and can be looked after later on.  Fortunately I did not receive the whole weight of the blow, which would otherwise have brought me senseless to the ground, and perhaps I should have been slain by my father’s hand.”

“By the Duke? and for what reason did he strike you?”

“Diana, he had grossly insulted you, and he dared to tell me of it.  Had he forgotten that the blood of the race of Champdoce ran in my veins as well as in his?”

Mademoiselle de Laurebourg burst into a passion of tears.

“I,” sobbed she, “I have brought all this upon you.”

“You?  Why, it is to you that he owes his life.  He dared to strike me as if I had been a lackey, but the thoughts of you stayed my hand.  I turned and fled, and never again will I enter that accursed house.  I renounce the Duke de Champdoce, he is no longer my father, and I will never look upon his face again.  Would that I could forget that such a man existed; but, no, I would rather that I remembered him for the sake of revenge.”