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“Sit quiet, madam,” he said to her; then, to the man on the box, “Drive on.”

“If he does, I’ll kill him!” she said fiercely. “Ah, what cowards! Will you see the Duke murdered?”

“The Duke!” laughed Guilford. “They will not kill him, unless–be easy, dear madam, ’twill be explained. Gad’s life!” he muttered to Molyneux, “‘Twere time the varlet had his lashing! D’ye hear her?”

“Barber or no barber,” answered Molyneux, “I wish I had warned him. He fights as few gentlemen could. Ah–ah! Look at that! ‘Tis a shame!”

On foot, his hat gone, his white coat sadly rent and gashed, flecked, too, with red, M. Beaucaire, wary, alert, brilliant, seemed to transform himself into a dozen fencing-masters; and, though his skill appeared to lie in delicacy and quickness, his play being continually with the point, sheer strength failed to beat him down. The young man was laughing like a child.

“Believe me,” said Molyneux “he’s no barber! No, and never was!”

For a moment there was even a chance that M. Beaucaire might have the best of it. Two of his adversaries were prostrate, more than one were groaning, and the indomitable Frenchman had actually almost beat off the ruffians, when, by a trick, he was overcome. One of them, dismounting, ran in suddenly from behind, and seized his blade in a thick leather gauntlet. Before Beaucaire could disengage the weapon, two others threw themselves from their horses and hurled him to the earth. “A moi! A moi, Francois!” he cried as he went down, his sword in fragments, but his voice unbroken and clear.

“Shame!” muttered one or two of the gentlemen about the coach.

“‘Twas dastardly to take him so,” said Molyneux. “Whatever his deservings, I’m nigh of a mind to offer him a rescue in the Duke’s face.”

“Truss him up, lads,” said the heavy voice. “Clear the way in front of the coach. There sit those whom we avenge upon a presumptuous lackey. Now, Whiffen, you have a fair audience, lay on and baste him.”

Two men began to drag M. Beaucaire toward a great oak by the roadside. Another took from his saddle a heavy whip with three thongs.

“A moi, Francois!”

There was borne on the breeze an answer–“Monseigneur! Monseigneur!” The cry grew louder suddenly. The clatter of hoofs urged to an anguish of speed sounded on the night. M. Beaucaire’s servants had lagged sorely behind, but they made up for it now. Almost before the noise of their own steeds they came riding down the moonlit aisle between the mists. Chosen men, these servants of Beaucaire, and like a thunderbolt they fell upon the astounded cavaliers.

“Chateaurien! Chateaurien!” they shouted, and smote so swiftly that, through lack of time, they showed no proper judgment, discriminating nothing between non-combatants and their master’s foes. They charged first into the group about M. Beaucaire, and broke and routed it utterly. Two of them leaped to the young man’s side, while the other four, swerving, scarce losing the momentum of their onset, bore on upon the gentlemen near the coach, who went down beneath the fierceness of the onslaught, cursing manfully.

“Our just deserts,” said Mr. Molyneux, his mouth full of dust and philosophy.

Sir Hugh Guilford’s horse fell with him, being literally ridden over, and the baronet’s leg was pinned under the saddle. In less than ten minutes from the first attack on M. Beaucaire, the attacking party had fled in disorder, and the patrician non-combatants, choking with expletives, consumed with wrath, were prisoners, disarmed by the Frenchman’s lackeys.

Guilford’s discomfiture had freed the doors of the coach; so it was that when M. Beaucaire, struggling to rise, assisted by his servants, threw out one hand to balance himself, he found it seized between two small, cold palms, and he looked into two warm, dilating eyes, that were doubly beautiful because of the fright and rage that found room in them, too.

M. le Duc Chateaurien sprang to his feet without the aid of his lackeys, and bowed low before Lady Mary.