"It were surely a madness now to attempt to withstand the Marquis." "The Marquis?
Ah yes--Florimond." She sat forward out of the shadows in which her great chair enveloped her, and let candle and firelight play about the matchless beauty of her perfect face.

There was a flush upon it, the flush of battle; and she was about to tell the Seneschal that not while one stone of Condillac should stand upon another, not while a gasp of breath remained in her frail body, would she surrender.

But she checked her rashness.

Well might it be that in the end she should abandon such a purpose.

Tressan was ugly as a toad, the most absurd, ridiculous bridegroom that ever led woman to the altar.