door, which stood open to the dim stairs, she made a grand gesture
with her hand, still red and wrinkled from the wash-tub. "Will the
King of France be pleased to enter and seat himself? There are
three chairs, but one of them is broken, so his Majesty's suite must
stand."

With a strident laugh she passed on to the next room through folding
doors.

"The principal room," she announced, with that hard irony in her
voice, which had, no doubt, penetrated thither from the soul of a
mother who had played no small part in the Revolution. "The guest-
chamber, one may say, provided that Monsieur le Marquis will sleep
on the floor in the drawing-room, or in the straw down below in the
stable."

The Abbe threw open the shutter of this room also and stood meekly
eyeing Marie with a tolerant smile. The room was almost bare of
furniture. A bed such as peasants sleep on; a few chairs; a
dressing-table tottering against the window-breast, and modestly
screened in one corner, the diminutive washing-stand still used in
southern France. For Gemosac had been sacked and the furniture
built up into a bonfire when Marie was a little child and the Abbe
Touvent a fat-faced timorous boy at the Seminary of Saintes.

"Beyond is Mademoiselle's room," concluded Marie, curtly. She
looked round her and shrugged her shoulders with a grim laugh which
made the Abbe shrink. They looked at each other in silence, the two
participants in the secret of Gemosac; for Marie's husband, the
third who had access to the chateau, did not count. He was a