For a moment he stood thus, and then, casting it aside, he exclaimed,-- "No, I cannot strike a Champdoce." Perhaps it was Norbert's intrepid attitude that restrained the Duke's frenzy, for he had not moved a muscle, but stood still, with his arms folded, and his head thrown haughtily back.
"No, this is an act of disobedience that I will not put up with," exclaimed the old man in a voice of thunder, and, springing upon his son, he grasped him by the collar and dragged him up to a room on the second floor, and thrust him violently through the doorway.
"You have twenty-four hours in which to reflect whether you will be willing to accept the wife that I have chosen for you," said he.
"I have already decided on that point," answered Norbert quietly.
The Duke made no reply, but slammed the door, which was of massive oak, and secured by a lock of enormous proportions.
Norbert gazed round; the only other exit from the room was by means of a window some forty feet from the ground.

The young man, however, imagined that some one would surely come to make up his bed for the night; that would give him two sheets; these he could knot together and thus secure a means of escape.

He might not be able to see Diana at once, but he could easily send her a message by Daumon, warning her of what had taken place.

Having arranged his plans, he threw himself into an armchair with a more easy mind than he had experienced for many months past.

The decisive step had been taken, and the relations between his father and himself clearly defined, and thus he naturally considered great progress had been made, and the task before him seemed as nothing to what he had already performed.
"My father," thought he, "must be half mad with passion." And Norbert was not wrong in his opinion.