CHAPTER X.THE RECRUIT.
In the great hall of the Chateau de Condillac sat the Dowager, her son, and the Lord Seneschal, in conference.
It was early in the afternoon of the last Thursday in October, exactly a week since Monsieur de Garnache all but broken-hearted at the failure of his mission--had departed from Grenoble.

They had dined, and the table was still strewn with vessels and the fragments of their meal, for the cloth had not yet been raised.

But the three of them had left the board--the Seneschal with all that reluctance with which he was wont to part company with the table, no matter how perturbed in spirit he might to--and they had come to group themselves about the great open fireplace.
A shaft of pale October sunshine entering through the gules of an escutcheon on the mullioned windows struck a scarlet light into silver aid glass upon the forsaken board.
Madame was speaking.

She was repeating words that she had uttered at least twenty times a day during the past week.
"It was a madness to let that fellow go.

Had we but put him and his servant out of the way, we should be able now to sleep tranquil in our beds.