Abruptly Marius swung round in his seat to face his mother.

"Must this Florimond return ?" he asked, and for all that he uttered no more words, so ample in their expression were those four that he had uttered and the tone of them, that his meaning left little work to the imagination.
Madame turned to stare at him, surprise ineffable in her glance--not at the thing that he suggested, but at the abruptness with which the suggestion came.

The cynical, sneering tone rang in her ears after the words were spoken, and she looked in his face for a confirmation of their full purport.
She observed the wine-flush on his cheek, the wine-glitter in his eye, and she remarked the slight smile on his lips and the cynical assumption of nonchalance with which he fingered the jewel in his ear as he returned her gaze.

She beheld now in her son a man more purposeful than she had ever known before.
A tense silence had followed his words, and the Lord Seneschal gaped at him, some of the colour fading from his plethoric countenance, suspecting as he did the true drift of Marius's suggestion.

At last it was madame who spoke--very softly, with a narrowing of the eyes.
"Call Fortunio," was all she said, but Marius understood full well the purpose for which she would have Fortunio called.
With a half-smile he rose, and going to the door he bade his page who was idling in the anteroom go summon the captain.