I was waked by a light in my face, and, all a-quiver, sprang up to meet my doom. But it was not the duke or any of his hirelings who bent over me, candle in hand; it was Mlle. de Montluc.

"Oh, my boy, my poor boy!" she cried pitifully, "I could not save you the flogging; on my honour, I could not. It would have availed you nothing had I pleaded for you on my bended knees."

With bewilderment I observed that the tears were brimming over her lashes and splashing down into the candle-flame. I stared, too confused for speech, while she, putting down the shaking candlestick on the altar, as she crossed herself, covered her face with her hands, sobbing.

"Mademoiselle," I stammered, "it is not worth mademoiselle's tears! The man, Pierre, he told me to scream, so they would think he was half flaying me. But in truth he did not strike very hard. He did not hurt so much."

She struggled to check the rising tempest of her tears, and presently dropped her hands and looked at me earnestly from out her shining wet eyes. "Is that true? Are you not flayed?" And to make sure, she laid her hand delicately on my back.

"They have whacked your coat to ribbons, but, thank St. Genevieve, they have not brought the blood. I saw a man flogged once—" she shut her eyes, shuddering, and her mouth quivered anew. "But I am not much hurt, mademoiselle," I answered her.

She took out her film of a handkerchief to wipe her wet cheeks, her hand still trembling. I could think of nothing but to repeat:

"I am not in the least hurt, mademoiselle."

"Ah, but if they have spared you the flogging to take your life!" she breathed.

It was not a heartening suggestion. To my astonishment, suddenly I found myself, frightened victim, striving to comfort this noblewoman for my death.

"Nay, I am not afraid. Since mademoiselle weeps over me, I can die happily."

She sprang toward me as if to protect me with her body from some menacing thrust.

"They shall not kill you!" she cried, her eyes flashing blue fire. "They shall not! Mon dieu! is Lorance de Montluc so feeble a thing that she cannot save a serving-boy?"

She fell back a pace, pressing her hands to her temples as if to stifle their throbbing.

"It was my fault," she cried—"it was all my fault. It was my vanity and silliness brought you to this. I should never have written that letter—a three years' child would have known better. But I had not seen M. de Mar for five weeks—I did not know, what I readily guess now, that he had taken sides against us. M. de Lorraine played on my pique."

"Mademoiselle," I said, "the worst has not followed, since M. Etienne did not come himself."

"You are glad for that?"

"Why, of course, mademoiselle. Was it not a trap for him?"

She caught her breath as if in pain.

"I knew that as soon as I saw that my cousin Mayenne was not angry. When I told what I had done and he smiled at me and said I should have my gloves, why, then I thought my heart would stop beating. I saw what I had accomplished—mon dieu, I was sick with repentance of it!"

I had to tell her I had not thought it.

"No," she answered; "I had got you into this by my foolishness; I must needs try to get you out by my wits. Brie, the one who took you by the throat—there has been bad blood between him and your lord this twelvemonth; only last May M. le Comte ran him through the wrist. Had I interfered for you," she said, colouring a little, "M. de Brie would have inferred interest in the master from that in the man, and he had seen to your beating himself."

It suddenly dawned on me that this M. de Brie was the "little cheese" of guard-room gossip. And I thought that the gentleman would hardly display so much venom against M. Etienne unless he were a serious obstacle to his hopes. Nor would mademoiselle be here at midnight, weeping over a serving-lad, if she cared nothing for the master. If she had not worn her heart on her sleeve before the laughing salon, mayhap she would show it to me.

"Mademoiselle," I cried, "when the billet was brought him M. Etienne rose from his bed at once to come. But he was faint from fatigue and loss of blood; he could not walk across the room. But he bade me try to make mademoiselle believe his absence was no fault of his. He wrote her a month ago; he found to-day the letter was never delivered."

"Is he hurt dangerously?"

"No," I admitted reluctantly; "no, I think not. He was wounded in the right forearm, and again pinked in the shoulder; but he will recover."

"You said," she went on, the tears standing in her eyes, "that he was penniless. I have not much, but what I have is freely his."

She advanced upon me holding out her silken purse which she had taken from her bosom; but I retreated.

"No, no, mademoiselle," I cried, ashamed of my hot words; "we are not penniless—or if we are, we get on very well sans le sou. They do everything for monsieur at the Trois Lanternes, and he has only to return to the Hotel St. Quentin to get all the gold pieces he can spend. Oh, no; we are in no want, mademoiselle. I was angry when I said it; I did not mean it. I cry mademoiselle's pardon."

She looked at me a little hesitatingly.

"You are telling me true?"

"Why, yes, mademoiselle; if my monsieur needed money, indeed, indeed, I would not refuse it."

"Then if you cannot take it for him, you can take it for yourself. It will be strange if in all Paris you cannot find something you like as a token from me." With her own white fingers she slipped some tinkling coins into my pouch, and cut short my thanks with the little wailing cry:

"Oh, your poor, bound hands! I have my poniard in my dress. I could free them in a second. But if they knew I had been here with you they never will let you go."

"If mademoiselle is running into danger staying here, I pray her to go back to bed. M. Etienne did not send me hither to bring her grief and trouble."

"Who are you?" she asked me abruptly. "You have never been here before on monsieur's errands?"

"No, mademoiselle; I came up only yesterday from Picardie. I belong on the St. Quentin estate. My name is Felix Broux."

"Alack, you have chosen a bad time to visit Paris!"

"I came up to see life," I said, "and mordieu! I am seeing it."

"I pray God you may not see death, too," she answered soberly.

She stood looking at me helplessly.

"I am in my lord's black books," she said slowly, as if to herself; "but I might weep Francois de Brie's rough heart to softness. Then it is a question whether he could turn Mayenne. I wish I knew whether the duke himself or only Paul de Lorraine has planned this move to-night. That is," she added, blushing, but speaking out candidly, "whether they attack M. de Mar as the League's enemy or as my lover."

"This M. Paul de Lorraine," said I, speaking as respectfully as I knew how, but eager to find out all I could for M. Etienne—"this M. de Lorraine is mademoiselle's lover, too?"

She shrugged her shoulders, neither assenting nor denying. "We are all pawns in the game for M. de Mayenne to push about as he chooses. For a time M. de Mar was high in his favour. Then my cousin Paul came back after a two years' disappearance, and straightway he was up and M. de Mar was down. And then Paul vanished again as suddenly as he had come, and it became the turn of M. de Brie. Now to-night Paul walked in as suddenly as he had left and at once played on me to write that unlucky letter. And what it bodes for him I know not."

She spoke with amazing frankness; yet, much as she had told me, the fact of her telling it told me even more. I saw that she was as lonely in this great house as I had been at St. Quentin. She would have talked delightedly to M. le Comte's dog.

"Mademoiselle," I said, "I would like well to tell you what has been happening to my M. Etienne this last month, if you are not afraid to stay long enough to hear it."

"Oh, every one is asleep long ago; it is past two o'clock. Yes, you may tell me if you wish."

She sat down on a praying-cushion, motioning me to the other, and I began my tale. At first she listened with a little air of languor, as if the whole were of slight consequence and she really did not care at all what M. le Comte had been about these five weeks. But as I got into the affair of the Rue Coupejarrets she forgot her indifference and leaned forward with burning cheeks, hanging on my words with eager questions. And when I told her how Lucas had evaded us in the darkness, she cried:

"Blessed Virgin! M. de Mar has enough to contend with in this Lucas, without Paul de Lorraine, and Brie, and the Duke of Mayenne himself."

I was silent, being of her opinion. Presently she asked reluctantly:

"Does your master think this Lucas a tool of M. de Mayenne's?"

"Yes, mademoiselle. He says secretaries do not plot against dukedoms for their own pleasure."

"Asassination was not wont to be my cousin Mayenne's way," she said with an accent of confidence that rang as false as a counterfeit coin. I saw well enough that mademoiselle did fear, at least, Mayenne's guilt. I thought I might tell her a little more.

"M. le Comte told me that since his father's coming to Paris M. de Mayenne made him offers to join the League, and he refused them. So then M. de Mayenne, seeing himself losing the whole house of St. Quentin, invented this."

"But it failed. Thank God, it failed! And now he will leave Paris. He will—he must!"

"He did mean to seek Navarre's camp to-morrow," I answered; "but—"

"But what?"

"But then the letter came."

"But that makes no difference! He must go for all that. The time is over for trimming. He must stand on one side or the other. I am a Ligueuse born and bred, and I tell him to go to King Henry. It is his father's side; it is his side. He cannot stay in Paris another day."

"I do not think he will go, mademoiselle."

"But he must!" she cried with vehemence. "Paris is not safe for him. If he cannot stand for his wound, he must go. I will send him a letter myself to tell him he must."

"Then he will never go."

"Felix!"

"He will not. He was going because he thought his lady flouted him; when he finds she does not—well, if he budges a step out of Paris, I do not know him. When he thought himself despised—"

"And why did I turn his suit into laughter in the salon if I did not mean that I despised him? I did it for you to tell him how I made a mock of him, that he might hate me and keep away from me."

"Oh," I said, "mademoiselle is beyond me; I cannot keep up with her."

"And you believed it! But you must needs spoil all by flaring out with impudent speech."

"I crave mademoiselle's pardon. I was wrong and insolent. But she played too well."

"And if it was not play?" she cried, rising. "If I do—well, I will not say despise him—but care nothing for him? Will he then go to St. Denis? Then tell him from me that he has my pity as one cruelly cozened, and my esteem as a one-time servant of mine, but never my love. Tell him I would willingly save him alive, for the sake of the love he once bore me. But as for any answering love in my bosom, I have not one spark. Tell him to go find a new mistress at St. Denis. He might as well cry for the moon as seek to win Lorance de Montluc."

"That may be true," I said; "but all the same he will try. Can mademoiselle suppose he will go out of Paris now, and leave her to marry Brie and Lorraine?"

"Only one," she protested with the shadow of a smile; and then a sudden rush of tears blinded her. "I am a very miserable girl," she said woefully, "for I bring nothing but danger to those that love me."

I dropped on my knees before her and kissed the hem of her dress.

"Ah, Felix," she said, "if you really pitied me, you would get him out of Paris!" And she fell to weeping as if her heart would break.

I had no skill to comfort her. I bent my head before her, silent. At length she sobbed out:

"It boots little for us to quarrel over what you shall say to M. de Mar, when we know not that you will ever speak to him again. And it was all my fault."

"Mademoiselle, it was the fault of my hasty tongue."

But she shook her head.

"I maintained that to you, but it was not true. Mayenne had something in his mind before. A general holds his schemes so dear and lives so cheap. But I will do my utmost, Felix, lad. It is not long to daylight now. I will go to Francois de Brie and we'll believe I shall prevail."

She took up her candle and said good night to me very gently and quietly, and gave me her hand to kiss. She opened the door,—with my fettered wrists I could not do the office for her,—and on the threshold turned to smile on me, wistfully, hopefully. In the next second, with a gasp that was half a cry, she blew out the light and pushed the door shut again.



XV

My Lord Mayenne.

I knew she was shutting the door by the click of the latch; in the next second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of it. "What—" I was beginning, when she laid her hand over my mouth. A line of light showed through the crack. She had not quite closed the door on account of the noise of the latch. She tried again; again it rattled and she desisted. I heard her fluttered breathing and I heard something else—a rapid, heavy tread in the corridor without. Into the council-room came a man carrying a lighted taper. It was Mayenne.

Mademoiselle, with a whispered "God save us!" sank in a heap at my feet.

I bent over her to find if she had swooned, when she seized my hand in a sharp grip that told me plain as words to be quiet.

Mayenne was yawning; he had a rumpled and dishevelled look like one just roused from sleep. He crossed over to the table, lighted the three-branched candlestick standing there, and seated himself with his back to us, pulling about some papers. I hardly dared glance at him, for fear my eyes should draw his; the crack of our door seemed to call aloud to him to mark it; but the candle-light scarcely pierced the shadows of the long room.

More quick footsteps in the corridor. Mayenne hitched his chair about, sidewise to the table and to us, facing the outer door. A tall man in black entered, saluting the general from the threshold.

"So you have come back?" spoke the duke in his even tones. It was impossible to tell whether the words were a welcome or a sentence.

"Yes," answered the other, in a voice as noncommittal as Mayenne's own. He shut the door after him and walked over to the table.

"And how goes it?"

"Badly."

The newcomer threw his hat aside and sat down without waiting for an invitation.

"What! Badly, sirrah!" Mayenne exclaimed sharply. "You come to me with that report?"

"I do, monsieur," answered the other with cool insolence, leaning back in his chair. The light fell directly on his face and proved to me what I had guessed at his first word. The duke's night visitor was Lucas. "Yes," he repeated indifferently, "it has gone badly. In fact, your game is up."

Mayenne jumped to his feet, bringing his fist down on the table.

"You tell me this?"

Lucas regarded him with an easy smile.

"Unfortunately, monsieur, I do."



Mayenne turned on him, cursing. Lucas with the quickness of a cat sprang a yard aside, dagger unsheathed.

"Put up that knife!" shouted Mayenne.

"When you put up yours, monsieur."

"I have drawn none!"

"In your sleeve, monsieur."

"Liar!" cried Mayenne.

I know not who was lying, for I could not tell whether the blade that flashed now in the duke's hand came from his sleeve or from his belt. But if he had not drawn before he had drawn now and rushed at Lucas. He dodged and they circled round each other, wary as two matched cocks. Lucas was strictly on the defensive; Mayenne, the less agile by reason of his weight, could make no chance to strike. He drew off presently.

"I'll have your neck wrung for this," he panted.

"For what, monsieur?" asked Lucas, imperturbably. "For defending myself?"

Mayenne let the charge go by default.

"For coming to me with the tale of your failures. Nom de dieu, do I employ you to fail?"

"We are none of us gods, monsieur. You yourself lost Ivry."

Mayenne backed over to his chair and seated himself, laying his knife on the table in front of him. His face smoothed out to good humour—no mean tribute to his power of self-control. For the written words can convey no notion of the maddening insolence of Lucas's bearing—an insolence so studied that it almost seemed unconscious and was thereby well-nigh impossible to silence.

"Sit down," bade the duke, "and tell me."

Lucas, standing at the foot of the table, observed:

"They turned you out of your bed, monsieur, to see me. It was unnecessary severity. My tale will keep till morning."

"By Heaven, it shall not!" Mayenne shouted. "Beware how much further you dare anger me, you Satan's cub!"

He was fingering the dagger again as if he longed to plunge it into Lucas's gullet, and I rather marvelled that he did not, or summon his guard to do it. For I could well understand how infuriating was Lucas. He carried himself with an air of easy equality insufferable to the first noble in the land. Mayenne's chosen role was the unmoved, the inscrutable, but Lucas beat him at his own game and drove him out into the open of passion and violence. It was a miracle to me that the man lived—unless, indeed, he were a prince in disguise.

"Satan's cub!" Lucas repeated, laughing. "Our late king had called me that, pardieu! But I knew not you acknowledged Satan in the family."

"I ordered Antoine to wake me if you returned in the night," Mayenne went on gruffly. "When I heard you had been here I knew something was wrong—unless the thing were done."

"It is not done. The whole plot is ruined."

"Nom de dieu! If it is by your bungling—"

"It was not by my bungling," Lucas answered with the first touch of heat he had shown. "It was fate—and that fool Grammont."

"Explain then, and quickly, or it will be the worse for you."

Lucas sat down, the table between them.

"Look here," he said abruptly, leaning forward over the board. "Have you Mar's boy?"

"What boy?"

"A young Picard from the St. Quentin estate, whom the devil prompted to come up to town to-day. Mar sent him here to-night with a love-message to Lorance."

"Oh," said Mayenne, slowly, "if it is a question of mademoiselle's love-affairs, it may be put off till to-morrow. It is plain to the very lackeys that you are jealous of Mar. But at present we are discussing l'affaire St. Quentin."

"It is all one," Lucas answered quickly. "You know what is to be the reward of my success."

"I thought you told me you had failed."

Lucas's hand moved instinctively to his belt; then he thought better of it and laid both hands, empty, on the table.

"Our plot has failed; but that does not mean that St. Quentin is immortal."

"You may be very sure of one thing, my friend," the duke observed. "I shall never give Lorance de Montluc to a white-livered flincher."

"The Duke of St. Quentin is not immortal," Lucas repeated. "I have missed him once, but I shall get him in spite of all."

"I am not sure about Lorance even then," said Mayenne, reflectively. "Francois de Brie is agitating himself about that young mistress. And he has not made any failures—as yet."

Lucas sprang to his feet.

"You swore to me I should have her."

"Permit me to remind you again that you have not brought me the price."

"I will bring you the price."

"E'en then," spoke Mayenne, with the smile of the cat standing over the mouse—"e'en then I might change my mind."

"Then," said Lucas, roundly, "there will be more than one dead duke in France."

Mayenne looked up at him as unmoved as if it were not in the power of mortal man to make him lose his temper. In stirring him to draw dagger, Lucas had achieved an extraordinary triumph. Yet I somehow thought that the man who had shown hot anger was the real man; the man who sat there quiet was the party leader.

He said now, evenly:

"That is a silly way to talk to me, Paul."

"It is the truth for once," Lucas made sullen answer.

So long as he could prick and irritate Mayenne he preserved an air of unshakable composure; but when Mayenne recovered patience and himself began to prick, Lucas's guard broke down. His voice rose a key, as it had done when I called him fool; and he burst out violently:

"Mort de dieu! monsieur, what am I doing your dirty work for? For love of my affectionate uncle?"

"It might well be for that. I have been your affectionate uncle, as you say."

"My affectionate uncle, you say? My hirer, my suborner! I was a Protestant; I was bred up by the Huguenot Lucases when my father cast off my mother and me to starve. I had no love for the League or the Lorraines. I was fighting in Navarre's ranks when I was made prisoner at Ivry."

"You were spying for Navarre. It was before the fight we caught you. You had been hanged and quartered in that gray dawn had I not recognized you, after twelve years, as my brother's son. I cut the rope from you and embraced you for your father's sake. You rode forth a cornet in my army, instead of dying like a felon on the gallows."

"You had your ends to serve," Lucas muttered.

"I took you into my household," Mayenne went on. "I let you wear the name of Lorraine. I did not deny you the hand of my cousin and ward, Lorance de Montluc."

"Deny me! No, you did not. Neither did you grant it me, but put me off with lying promises. You thought then you could win back the faltering house of St. Quentin by a marriage between your cousin and the Comte de Mar. Afterward, when my brother Charles dashed into Paris, and the people clamoured for his marriage with the Infanta, you conceived the scheme of forcing Lorance on him. But it would not do, and again you promised her to me if I could get you certain information from the royalist army. I returned in the guise of an escaped prisoner to Henry's camp to steal you secrets; and the moment my back was turned you listened to proposals from Mar again."

"Mar is not in the race now. You need not speak of him, nor of your brother Charles, either."

"No; I can well understand that my brother's is not a pleasant name in your ears," Lucas agreed. "You acknowledged one King Charles X; you would like well to see another Charles X, but it is not Charles of Guise you mean."

"I have no desire to be King of France," Mayenne began angrily.

"Have you not? That is well, for you will never feel the crown on your brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish hammer and the Bearnais anvil; there will soon be nothing left of you but powder."

"Nom de dieu, Paul—" Mayenne cried, half rising; but Lucas, leaning forward on the table, riveting him with his keen eyes, went on:

"Do not mistake me, monsieur uncle. I think you in bad case, but I am ready to sink or swim with you. So long as the hand of Lorance is in your bestowing I am your faithful servant. I have not hesitated to risk the gallows to serve you. Last March I made my way here, disguised, to tell you of the king's coming change of faith and of St. Quentin's certain defection. I demanded then my price, my marriage with mademoiselle. But you put me off again. You sent me back to Mantes to kill you St. Quentin."

"Aye. And you have been about it these four months, and you have not killed him."

Lucas reddened with ire.

"I am no Jacques Clement to stab and be massacred. You cannot buy such a service of me, M. de Mayenne. If I do bravo's work for you I choose my own time and way. I brought the duke to Paris, delivered him up to you to deal with as it liked you. But you with your army at your back were afraid to kill him. You flinched and waited. You dared not shoulder the onus of his death. Then I, to help you out of your strait, planned to make his own son's the hand that should do the deed; to kill the duke and ruin his heir; to put not only St. Quentin but Mar out of your way—"

"Let us be accurate, Paul," Mayenne said. "Mar was not in my way; he was of no consequence to me. You mean, put him out of your way."

"He was in your way, too. Since he would not join the Cause he was a hindrance to it. You had as much to gain as I by his ruin."

"Something—not as much. I did not want him killed—I preferred him to Valere."

"Nor did I want him killed; so our views jibed well."

"Why not, then? Did you prefer him as your wife's lover to some other who might appear?"

"I do not intend that my wife shall have lovers," Lucas answered.

Mayenne broke into laughter.

"Nom d'un chien, where will you keep her? In the Bastille? Lorance and no lovers! Ho, ho!"

"I mean none whom she favours."

"Then why do you leave Mar alive? She adores the fellow," Mayenne said. I had no idea whether he really thought it or only said it to annoy Lucas. At any rate it had its effect. Lucas's brows were knotted; he spoke with an effort, like a man under stress of physical pain.

"I know she loves him now, and she would love him dead; but she would not love him a parricide."

"Is that your creed? Pardieu! you don't know women. The blacker the villain the more they adore him."

"I know it is true, monsieur," Lucas said smoothly, "that you have had successes."

Mayenne started forward with half an oath, changing to a laugh.

"So it is not enough for you to possess the fair body of Lorance; you must also have her love?"

"She will love me," Lucas answered uneasily. "She must."

"It is not worth your fret," Mayenne declared. "If she did, how long would it last? Souvent femme varie—that is the only fixed fact about her. If Lorance loves Mar to-day, she will love some one else to-morrow, and some one else still the day after to-morrow. It is not worth while disturbing yourself about it."

"She will not love any one else," Lucas said hoarsely.

Mayenne laughed.

"You are very young, Paul."

"She shall not love any one else! By the throne of heaven, she shall not!"

Mayenne went on laughing. If Lucas had for the moment teased him out of his equanimity, the duke had paid back the score a hundredfold. Lucas's face was seared with his passions as with the torture-iron; he clinched his hands together, breathing hard. On my side of the door I heard a sharp little sound in the darkness; mademoiselle had gritted her teeth.

"It is a little early to sweat over the matter," Mayenne said, "since mademoiselle is not your wife nor ever likely to become so."

"You refuse her to me?" Lucas cried, livid. I thought he would leap over the table at one bound on Mayenne. It occurred to the duke to take up his dagger.

"I promise her to you when you kill me St. Quentin. And you have not killed me St. Quentin but instead come airily to tell me the scheme—my scheme—is wrecked. Pardieu! it was never my scheme. I never advocated stolen pistoles and suborned witnesses and angered nephews and deceived sons and the rest of your cumbrous machinery. I would have had you stab him as he bent over his papers, and walk out of the house before they discovered him. But you had not the pluck for that; you must needs plot and replot to make some one else do your work. Now, after months of intriguing and waiting, you come to me to tell me you have failed. Morbleu! is there any reason why I should not have you kicked into the gutter, as no true son of the valourous Le Balafre?"

Lucas's hand went to his belt again; he made one step as if to come around the table. Mayenne's angry eye was on him but he did not move; and Lucas made no more steps. Controlling himself with an effort, he said:

"It was not my fault, monsieur. No man could have laboured harder or planned better than I. I have been diligent, I have been clever. I have made my worst enemy my willing tool—I have made Monsieur's own son my cat's-paw. I have left no end loose, no contingency unprovided for—and I am ruined by a freak of fate."

"I never knew a failure yet but what the fault was fate's," Mayenne returned.

"Call it accident, then, call it the devil, call it what you like!" Lucas cried. "I still maintain it was not my fault. Listen, monsieur."

He sat down again and began his story, striving as he talked to reconquer something of his old coolness.

"The thing was ruined by the advent of this boy, Mar's lackey I spoke of. You said he had not been here?"

"You may go to Lorance with that question," Mayenne answered; "I have something else to attend to than the intrigues of my wife's maids."

"He started hither; I thought some one would have the sense to keep him. Mordieu! I will find from Lorance whether she saw him."

He fell silent, gnawing his lip; I could see that his thought had travelled away from the plot to the sore subject of mademoiselle's affections.

"Well," said Mayenne, sharply, "what about your boy?"

It was a moment before Lucas answered. When he did he spoke low and hurriedly, so that I could scarce catch the words. I knew it was no fear of listeners that kept his voice down—they had shouted at each other as if there was no one within a mile. I guessed that Lucas, for all his bravado, took little pride in his tale, nor felt happy about its reception. I could catch names now and then, Monsieur's, M. Etienne's, Grammont's, but the hero of the tale was myself.

"You let him to the duke?" Mayenne cried presently.

At the harsh censure of his voice, Lucas's rang out with the old defiance:

"With Vigo at his back I did. Sangdieu! you have yet to make the acquaintance of St. Quentin's equery. A regiment of your lansquenets couldn't keep him out."

"Does he never take wine?" Mayenne asked, lifting his hand with shut fingers over the table and then opening them.

"That is easy to say, monsieur, sitting here in your own hotel stuffed with your soldiers. But it was not so easy to do, alone in my enemy's house, when at the least suspicion of me they had broken me on the wheel."

"That is the rub!" Mayenne cried violently. "That is the trouble with all of you. You think more of the safety of your own skins than of accomplishing your work. Mordieu! where should I be to-day—where would the Cause be—if my first care was my own peril?"

"Then that is where we differ, uncle," Lucas answered with a cold sneer. "You are, it is well known, a patriot, toiling for the Church and the King of Spain, with never a thought for the welfare of Charles of Lorraine, Lord of Mayenne. But I, Paul of Lorraine, your humble nephew, lord of my brain and hands, freely admit that I am toiling for no one but the aforesaid Paul of Lorraine. I should find it most inconvenient to get on without a head on my shoulders, and I shall do my best to keep it there."

"You need not tell me that; I know it well enough," Mayenne answered. "You are each for himself, none for me. At the same time, Paul, you will do well to remember that your interest is to forward my interest."

"To the full, monsieur. And I shall kill you St. Quentin yet. You need not call me coward; I am working for a dearer stake than any man in your ranks."

"Well," Mayenne rejoined, "get on with your tale."

Lucas went on, Mayenne listening quietly, with no further word of blame. He moved not so much as an eyelid till Lucas told of M. le Duc's departure, when he flung himself forward in his chair with a sharp oath.

"What! by daylight?"

"Aye. He was afraid, after this discovery, of being set on at night."

"He went out in broad day?"

"So Vigo said. I saw him not," Lucas answered with something of his old nonchalance.

"Mille tonnerres du diable!" Mayenne shouted. "If this is true, if he got out in broad day, I'll have the head of the traitor that let him. I'll nail it over his own gate."

"It is not worth your fret, monsieur," Lucas said lightly. "If you did, how long would it avail? Souvent homme trahie; that is the only fixed fact about him. If they pass St. Quentin to-day, they will pass some one else to-morrow, and some one else still the day after."

Mayenne looked at him, half angry, half startled into some deeper emotion at this deft twisting of his own words.

"Souvent homme trahie, Mal habile qui s'y fie,"

he repeated musingly. He might have been saying over the motto of the house of Lorraine. For the Guises believed in no man's good faith, as no man believed in theirs.

"Souvent homme trahie," Mayenne said again, as if in the words he recognized a bitter verity. "And that is as true as King Francis's version. I suppose you will be the next, Paul."

"When I give up hope of Lorance," Lucas said bluntly.

I caught myself suddenly pitying the two of them: Mayenne, because, for all his power and splendour and rank next to a king's and ability second to none, he dared trust no man—not the son of his body, not his brother. He had made his own hell and dwelt in it, and there was no need to wish him any ill. And Lucas, perjured traitor, was farther from the goal of his desire than if we had slain him in the Rue Coupejarrets.

"What next? It appears you escaped the redoubted Vigo," Mayenne went on in his every-day tone; and the vision faded, and I saw him once more as the greatest noble and greatest scoundrel in France, and feared and hated him, and Lucas too, as the betrayer of my dear lord Etienne.

"Trust me for that."

"Then came you here?"

"Not at once. I tracked Mar and this Broux to Mar's old lodgings at the Three Lanterns. When I had dogged them to the door I came here and worked upon Lorance to write Mar a letter commanding his presence. For I thought that the night was yet young and to-morrow he might be out of my reach. Well, it appears he had not the courage to come but he sent the boy. I was not sorry. I thought I could settle him more quietly at the inn. The boy went back once and almost ran into me in the court, but he did not see me. I entered and asked for lodgings; but the fat old fool of a host put me through the catechism like an inquisitor, and finally declared the inn was full. I said I would take a garret; but it was no use. Out I must trudge. I did, and paid two men to get into a brawl in front of the house, that the inn people might run out to look. But instead they locked the gate and put up the shutters in the cabaret."

Mayenne burst out laughing.

"It was not your night, Paul."

"No," said Lucas, shortly.

"And what then? It did not take you till three o'clock to be put out of the inn."

"No," Lucas answered; "I spoke to you of the varlet Pontou with whom Grammont had quarrelled. He had shut him up in a closet of the house in the Rue Coupejarrets. After the fight in the court we all went our ways, forgetting him. So I paid the house a visit; I was afraid some one else might find him and he might tell tales."

"And will he tell tales?"

"No," said Lucas, "he will tell no tales."

"How about your spy in the Hotel St. Quentin?"

"Martin, the clerk? Oh, I warned him off before I left," Lucas said easily. "He will lie perdu till we want him again. And Grammont, you see, is dead too. There is no direct witness to the thing but the boy Broux."

"That's as good as to say there is none," Mayenne answered; "for I have the boy."



XVI

Mayenne's ward.

Lucas sprang up.

"You have him? Where?"

"Yes, I have him," Mayenne answered with his tantalizing slowness.

"Alive?"

"I suppose so. He had his flogging but I told them I was not done with him. I thought we might have a use for him. He is in the oratory there."

"Diable! Listening?" cried Lucas, as if a quick doubt of Mayenne's good faith to him struck his mind.

"Certainly not," Mayenne answered. "The door is bolted; he might be in the street for all he can hear. The wall was built for that."

"What will you do with him, monsieur?"

"We'll have him out," said Mayenne. Lucas, needing no second bidding, hastened down the room.

All this while mademoiselle, on the floor at my feet, had neither stirred nor whispered, as rigid as the statued Virgin herself. But now she rose and for one moment laid her hand on my shoulder with an encouraging pat; the next she flung the door wide just as Lucas reached the threshold.

He recoiled as from a ghost.

"Lorance!" he gasped, "Lorance!"

"Nom de dieu!" came Mayenne's shout from the back of the room. "What! Lorance!"

He caught up the candelabrum and strode over to us.

Mademoiselle stepped out into the council-room, I hanging back on the other side of the sill. She was as white as linen, but she lifted her head proudly. She had not the courage that knows no fear, but she had the courage that rises to the need. Crouching on the oratory floor she had been in a panic lest they find her. But in the moment of discovery she faced them unflinching.

"You spying here, Lorance!" Mayenne stormed at her.

"I did not come here to spy, monsieur," she answered. "I was here first, as you see. Your presence was as unlooked for by me as mine by you."

His next accusation brought the blood in scarlet flags to her pale cheeks; she made him no answer but burned him with her indignant eyes.

"Mordieu, monsieur!" Lucas cried. "This is Mlle. de Montluc."

"Then why did you come?" demanded Mayenne.

"Because I had done harm to the lad and was sorry," she said. "You defend me now, Paul, but you did not hesitate to make a tool of me in your cowardly schemes."

"It was kindly meant, mademoiselle," Lucas retorted. "Since I shall kill M. le Comte de Mar in any case, I thought it would pleasure you to have a word with him first."

I think it did not need the look she gave him to make him regret the speech. This Lucas was an extraordinary compound of shrewdness and recklessness, one separating from the other like oil and vinegar in a sloven's salad. He could plan and toil and wait, to an end, with skill and fortitude and patience; but he could not govern his own gusty tempers.

"You have been crying, Lorance," Mayenne said in a softer tone.

"For my sins, monsieur," she answered quickly. "I am grieved most bitterly to have been the means of bringing this lad into danger. Since Paul cozened me into doing what I did not understand, and since this is not the man you wanted but only his servant, will you not let him go free?"

"Why, my pretty Lorance, I did not mean to harm him," Mayenne protested, smiling. "I had him flogged for his insolence to you; I thought you would thank me for it."

"I am never glad over a flogging, monsieur."

"Then why not speak? A word from you and it had stopped."

She flushed red for very shame.

"I was afraid—I knew you vexed with me," she faltered. "Oh, I have done ill!" She turned to me, silently imploring forgiveness. There was no need to ask.

"Then you will let him go, monsieur? Alack that I did not speak before! Thank you, my cousin!"

"Of what did you suspect me? The boy was whipped for a bit of impertinence to you; I had no cause against him."

My heart leaped up; at the same time I scorned myself for a craven that I had been overcome by groundless terror.

"Then I have been a goose so to disturb myself," mademoiselle laughed out in relief. "You do well to rebuke me, cousin. I shall never meddle in your affairs again."

"That will be wise of you," Mayenne returned. "For I did mean to let the boy go. But since you have opened his door and let him hear what he should not, I have no choice but to silence him."

"Monsieur!" she gasped, cowering as from a blow.

"Aye," he said quietly. "I would have let him go. But you have made it impossible."

Never have I seen so piteous a sight as her face of misery. Had my hands been free, Mayenne had been startled to find a knife in his heart.

"Never mind, mademoiselle," I cried to her. "You came and wept over me, and that is worth dying for."

"Monsieur," she cried, recovering herself after the first instant of consternation, "you are degrading the greatest noble in the land! You, the head of the house of Lorraine, the chief of the League, the commander of the allied armies, debase yourself in stooping to take vengeance on a stable-boy."

"It is no question of vengeance; it is a question of safety," he answered impatiently. Yet I marvelled that he answered at all, since absolute power is not obliged to give an account of itself.

"Is your estate then so tottering that a stable-boy can overturn it? In that case be advised. Go hang yourself, monsieur, while there is yet time."

He flushed with anger, and this time he offered no justification. He advanced on the girl with outstretched hand.

"Mademoiselle, it is not my habit to take advice from the damsels of my household. Nor do I admit them to my council-room. Permit me then to conduct you to the staircase."

She retreated toward the threshold where I stood, still covering me as with a shield.

"Monsieur, you are very cruel to me."

"Your hand, mademoiselle."

She did not yield it to him but held out both hands, clasped in appeal.

"Monsieur, you have always been my loving kinsman. I have always tried to do your pleasure. I thought you meant harm to the boy because he was a servant to M. de Mar, and I knew that M. de St. Quentin, at least, had gone over to the other side. I did not know what you would do with him, and I could not rest in my bed because it was through me he came here. Monsieur, if I was foolish and frightened and indiscreet, do not punish the lad for my wrong-doing."

Mayenne was still holding out his hand for her.

"I wish you sweet dreams, my cousin Lorance."

"Monsieur," she cried, shrinking back till she stood against the door-jamb, "will you not let the boy go?"

"How will you look to-morrow," he said with his unchanged smile, "if you lose all your sleep to-night, my pretty Lorance?"

"A reproach to you," she answered quickly. "You will mark my white cheeks and my red eyes, and you will say, 'Now, there is my little cousin Lorance, my good ally Montluc's daughter, and I have made her cry her eyes blind over my cruelty. Her father, dying, gave her to me to guard and cherish, and I have made her miserable. I am sorry. I wish I had not done it.'"

"Mademoiselle," the duke repeated, "will you get to your bed?"

She did not stir, but, fixing him with her brilliant eyes, went on as if thinking aloud.

"I remember when I was a tiny maid of five or six, and you and your brother Guise (whom God rest!) would come to our house. You would ask my father to send for me as you sat over your wine, and I would run in to kiss you and be fed comfits from your pockets. I thought you the handsomest and gallantest gentleman in France, as indeed you were."

"You were the prettiest little creature ever was," Mayenne said abruptly.

"And my little heart was bursting with love and admiration of you," she returned. "When I first could lisp, I learned to pray for my cousin Henri and my cousin Charles. I have never forgotten them one night in all these years. 'God receive and bless the soul of Henri de Guise; God guard and prosper Charles de Mayenne.' But you make it hard for me to ask it for my cousin Charles."

"This is a great coil over a horse-boy," Mayenne said curtly.

"Life is as dear to a horse-boy as to M. le Duc de Mayenne."

"I tell you I did not mean to kill the boy," Mayenne said. "With the door shut he could hear nothing. I meant to question him and let him go. But you have seen fit to meddle in what is no maid's business, mademoiselle. You have unlocked the door and let him listen to my concerns. Dead men, mademoiselle, tell no tales."

"M. de Mayenne," she said, "I cannot see that you need trouble for the tales of boys—you, the lord of half France. But if you must needs fear his tongue, why, even then you should set him free. He is but a serving-boy sent here with a message. It is wanton murder to take his life; it is like killing a child."

"He is not so harmless as you would lead one to suppose, mademoiselle," the duke retorted. "Since you have been eavesdropping, you have heard how he upset your cousin Paul's arrangements."

"For that you should be thankful to him, monsieur. He has saved you the stain of a cowardly crime."

"Mordieu!" Mayenne exclaimed, "who foully murdered my brother?"

"The Valois."

"And his henchman, St. Quentin."

"Not so," she cried. "He was here in Paris when it happened. He was revolted at the deed."

"Did they teach you that at the convent?"

"No, but it is true. M. de St. Quentin warned my cousin Henri not to go to Blois."

"Pardieu, you think them angels, these St. Quentins."

"I think them brave and honest gentlemen, as I think you, Cousin Charles."

"That sounds ill on the lips that have but now called me villain and murderer," Mayenne returned.

"I have not called you that, monsieur; I said you had been saved from the guilt of murder, and I knew one day you would be glad."

He kept silence, eying her in a puzzled way. After a moment she went on:

"Cousin Charles, it is our lot to live in such days of blood and turmoil that we know not any other way to do but injure and kill. I think you are more harassed and troubled than any man in France. You have Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots and half the provinces to fight in the field, and your own League to combat at home. You must make favour with each of a dozen quarrelling factions, must strive and strive to placate and loyalize them all. The leaders work each for his own end, each against the others and against you; and the truth is not in one of them, and their pledges are ropes of straw. They intrigue and rebel and betray till you know not which way to turn, and you curse the day that made you head of the League."

"I do curse the day Henri was killed," Mayenne said soberly. "And that is true, Lorance. But I am head of the League, and I must do my all to lead it to success."

"But not by the path of shame!" she cried quickly. "Success never yet lay that way. Henri de Valois slew our Henri, and see how God dealt with him!"

He looked at her fixedly; I think he heeded her words less than her shining, earnest eyes. And he said at last:

"Well, you shall have your boy, Lorance."

"Ah, monsieur!"

With tears dimming the brightness of those sweet eyes she dropped on her knees before him, kissing his hand.

Lucas, since his one unlucky outburst, had said never a word but stood looking on with a ruefulness of visage that it warmed the cockles of my heart to see.

Certes, he was in no very pleasant corner, this dear M. Paul. His mistress had heard his own lips describe his plot against the St. Quentins; there was no possibility of lying himself clear of it. Out of his own mouth he was convicted of spycraft, treachery, and cowardly murder. And in the Hotel de Lorraine, as in the Hotel de St. Quentin, his betrayal had come about through me. I was unwitting agent in both cases; but that did not make him love me the more. Could eyes slay, I had fallen of the glance he shot me over mademoiselle's bowed head; but when she rose he said to her:

"Mademoiselle, the boy is as much my prisoner as M. le Duc's, since I got him here. But I, too, freely give him up to you."

She swept him a curtsey, silently, without looking at him. He made an eager pace nearer her.

"Lorance," he cried in a low, rapid voice, "I see I am out of your graces. Now, by Our Lady, what's life worth to me if you will not take me back again? I admit I have tried to ruin the Comte de Mar. Is that any marvel, since he is my rival with you? Last March, when I was hiding here and watched from my window the gay M. de Mar come airily in, day after day, to see and make love to you, was it any marvel that I swore to bring his proud head to the dust?"

Now she turned to him and met his gaze squarely.

"The means you employed was the marvel," she said. "If you did not approve of his visits, you had only to tell him so. He had been ready to defend to you his right to make them. But you never showed him your face; of course, had you, you could not have become his father's housemate and Judas. Oh, I blush to know that the same blood runs in your veins and mine!"

"You speak hard words, mademoiselle," Lucas returned, keeping his temper with a stern effort. "You forget that we live in France in war-time, and not in the kingdom of heaven. I was toiling for more than my own revenges. I was working at your cousin Mayenne's commands, to aid our holy cause, for the preservation of the Catholic Church and the Catholic kingdom of France."

"Your conversion is sudden, then; only an hour ago you were working for nothing and no one but Paul de Lorraine."

"Come, come, Lorance," Mayenne interposed, his caution setting him ever on the side of compromise. "Paul is no worse than the rest of us. He hates his enemies, and so do we all; he works against them to the best of his power, and so do we all. They are Kingsmen, we are Leaguers; they fight for their side, and we fight for ours. If we plot against them, they plot against us; we murder lest we be murdered. We cannot scruple over our means. Nom de dieu, mademoiselle, what do you expect? Civil war is not a dancing-school."

"Mademoiselle is right," Lucas said humbly, refusing any defence. "We have been using cowardly means, weapons unworthy of Christian gentlemen. And I, at least, cannot plead M. le Duc's excuse that I was blinded in my zeal for the Cause. For I know and you know there is but one cause with me. I went to kill St. Quentin because I was promised you for it, as I would have gone to kill the Pope himself. This is my excuse; I did it to win you. There is no crime in God's calendar I would not commit for that."

He had possessed himself of her hand and was bending over her, burning her with his hot eyes. Mass of lies as the man was, in this last sentence I knew he spoke the truth.

She strove to free herself from him with none of the flattered pride in his declaration which he had perhaps looked for. Instead, she eyed him with positive fear, as if she saw no way of escape from his rampant desire.

"I wish rather you would practise a little virtue to win me," she said.

"So I will if you ask it," he returned, unabashed. "Lorance, I love you so there is no depth to which I could not stoop to gain you; there is no height to which I cannot rise. There is no shame so bitter, no danger so awful, that I would not face it for you. Nor is there any sacrifice I will not make to gain your good will. I hate M. de Mar above any living man because you have smiled on him; but I will let him go for your sake. I swear to you before the figure of Our Blessed Lady there that I will drop all enmity to Etienne de Mar. From this time forward I will neither move against him nor cause others to move against him in any shape or manner, so help me God!"

He dropped her hand to kiss the cross of his sword. She retreated from him, her face very pale, her breast heaving.

"You make it hard for me to know when you are speaking the truth," she said.

"May the lightning strike me if I am lying!" Lucas cried. "May my tongue rot at the root if ever I lie to you, Lorance!"

"Then I am very grateful and glad," she said gravely, and again curtsied to him.

"Yes, I give you my word for that, too, Lorance," Mayenne added. "I have no quarrel with young Mar. His father has stirred up more trouble for me than any dozen of Huguenots; I have my score to settle with St. Quentin. But I have no quarrel with the son. I will not molest him."

"Grand'merci, monsieur," she said, sweeping him another of her graceful obeisances.

"Understand me, mademoiselle," Mayenne went on. "I pardon him, but not that he may be anything to you. That time is past. The St. Quentins are Navarre's men now, and our enemies. For your sake I will let Mar alone; but if he come near you again, I will crush him as I would a buzzing fly."

"That I understand, monsieur," she answered in a low tone. "While I live under your roof, I shall not be treacherous to you. I am a Ligueuse and he is a Kingsman, and there can be nothing between us. There shall be nothing, monsieur. I do not swear it, as Paul needs, because I have never lied to you."

She did not once look at Lucas, yet I think she saw him wince under her stab. The Duke of Mayenne was right; not even Mlle. de Montluc loved her enemies.

"You are a good girl, Lorance," Mayenne said.

"Will you let the boy go now, Cousin Charles?" she asked.

"Yes, I will let your boy go," he made answer. "But if I do this for you, I shall expect you henceforth to do my bidding."

"You have called me a good girl, cousin."

"Aye, so you are. And there is small need to look so Friday-faced about it. If I have denied you one lover, I will give you another just as good."

"Am I Friday-faced?" she said, summoning up a smile. "Then my looks belie me. For since you free this poor boy whom I was like to have ruined I take a grateful and happy heart to bed."

"Aye, and you must stay happy. Pardieu, what does it matter whether your husband have yellow hair or brown? My brother Henri was for getting himself into a monastery because he could not have his Margot. Yet in less than a year he is as merry as a fiddler with the Duchesse Katharine."

"You have made me happy, to-night at least, monsieur," she answered gently, if not merrily.

"It is the most foolish act of my life," Mayenne answered. "But it is for you, Lorance. If ill comes to me by it, yours is the credit."

"You can swear him to silence, monsieur," she cried quickly.

"What use? He would not keep silence."

"He will if I ask it," she returned, flinging me a look of bright confidence that made the blood dance in my veins. But Mayenne laughed.

"When you have lived in the world as long as I have, you will not so flatter yourself, Lorance."

Thus it happened that I was not bound to silence concerning what I had seen and heard in the house of Lorraine.

Mayenne took out his dagger.

"What I do I do thoroughly. I said I'd set you free. Free you shall be."

Mademoiselle sprang forward with pleading hand.

"Let me cut the cords, Cousin Charles."

He recoiled a bare second, the habit of a lifetime prompting him against the putting of a weapon in any one's hand. Then, ashamed of the suspicion, which indeed was not of her, he yielded the knife and she cut my bonds. She looked straight into my eyes, with a glance earnest, beseeching, loving; I could not begin to read all she meant by it. The next moment she was making her deep curtsey before the duke.

"Monsieur, I shall never cease to love you for this. And now I thank you for your long patience, and bid you good night."

With a bare inclination of the head to Lucas, she turned to go. But Mayenne bade her pause.

"Do I get but a curtsey for my courtesy? No warmer thanks, Lorance?"

He held out his arms to her, and she let him kiss both her cheeks.

"I will conduct you to the staircase, mademoiselle," he said, and taking her hand with stately politeness led her from the room. The light seemed to go from it with the gleam of her yellow gown.

"Lorance!" Lucas cried to her, but she never turned her head. He stood glowering, grinding his teeth together, his glib tongue finding for once no way to better his sorry case. He was the picture of trickery rewarded; I could not repress a grin at him. Marking which, he burst out at me, vehemently, yet in a low tone, for Mayenne had not closed the door:

"You think I am bested, do you, you devil's brat? Let him laugh that wins; I shall have her yet."

"I will tell M. le Comte so," I answered with all the impudence I could muster.

"By Heaven, you will tell him nothing," he cried. "You will never see daylight again."

"I have Mayenne's word," I began, but his retort was to draw dagger. I deemed it time to stop parleying, and I did what the best of soldiers must do sometimes: I ran. I bounded into the oratory, flinging the door to after me. He was upon it before I could get it shut, and the heavy oak was swung this way and that between us, till it seemed as if we must tear it off the hinges. I contrived not to let him push it open wide enough to enter; meantime, as I was unarmed, I thought it no shame to shriek for succour. I heard an answering cry and hurrying footsteps. Then Lucas took his weight from the door so suddenly that mine banged it shut. The next minute it flew open again, mademoiselle, frightened and panting, on the threshold.

A tall soldier with a musket stood at her back; at one side Lucas lounged by the cabinet where the duke had set down the light. His right hand he held behind his back, while with his left he poked his dagger into the candle-flame.

Mayenne, red and puffing, hurried into the room.

"What is the pother?" he demanded. "What devilment now, Paul?"

"Mademoiselle's protege is nervous," Lucas answered with a fine sneer. "When I drew out my knife to get the thief from the candle he screamed to wake the dead and took sanctuary in the oratory."

I had given him the lie then and there, but as I emerged from the darkness Mayenne commanded:

"Take him out to the street, d'Auvray."

The tall musketeer, saluting, motioned me to precede him. For a moment I hesitated, burning to defend my valour before mademoiselle. Then, reflecting how much harm my hasty tongue had previously done me, and that the path to freedom was now open before me, I said nothing. Nor had I need. For as I turned she flashed over to Lucas and said straight in his face:

"When you marry me, Paul de Lorraine, you will marry a dead wife."



XVII

"I'll win my lady!"

Lucas's prophecy came to grief within five minutes of the making. For when the musketeer unbarred the house door for me, the first thing I saw was the morning sun.

My spirits danced at sight of him, as he himself might dance on Easter day. Within the close, candle-lit room I had had no thought but that it was still black midnight; and now at one step I passed from the gloomy house into the heartening sunshine of a new clean day. I ran along as joyously as if I had left the last of my troubles behind me, forgotten in some dark corner of the Hotel de Lorraine. Always my heart lifts when, after hours within walls, I find myself in the open again. I am afraid in houses, but out of doors I have no fear of harm from any man or any thing.

Though Sir Sun was risen this half-hour, and at home we should all have been about our business, these lazy Paris folk were still snoring. They liked well to turn night into day and lie long abed of a morning. Although here a shopkeeper took down shutters, and there a brisk servant-lass swept the door-step, yet I walked through a sleeping city, quiet as our St. Quentin woods, save that here my footsteps echoed in the emptiness. At length, with the knack I have, whatever my stupidities, of finding my way in a strange place, I arrived before the courtyard of the Trois Lanternes. The big wooden doors were indeed shut, but when I had pounded lustily awhile a young tapster, half clad and cross as a bear, opened to me. I vouchsafed him scant apology, but, dropping on a heap of hay under a shed in the court, passed straightway into dreamless slumber.

When I awoke my good friend the sun was looking down at me from near his zenith, and my first happy thought was that I was just in time for dinner. Then I discovered that I had been prodded out of my rest by the pitchfork of a hostler.

"Sorry to disturb monsieur, but the horses must be fed."

"Oh, I am obliged to you," I said, rubbing my eyes. "I must go up to M. le Comte."

"He has been himself to look at you, and gave orders you were not to be disturbed. But that was last week. Dame! you slept like a sabot."

It did not take me long to brush the straw off me, wash my face at the trough, and present myself before monsieur. He was dressed and sitting at table in his bedchamber, while a drawer served him with dinner.

"You are out of bed, monsieur," I cried.

"But yes," he answered, springing up, "I am as well as ever I was. Felix, what has happened to you?"



I glanced at the serving-man; M. Etienne ordered him at once from the room.

"Now tell me quickly," he cried, as I faltered, tongue-tied from very richness of matter. "Mademoiselle?"

"Ah, mademoiselle!" I exclaimed. "Mademoiselle is—" I paused in a dearth of words worthy of her.

"She is, she is!" he agreed, laughing. "Oh, go on, you little slow-poke! You saw her? And she said—"

He was near to laying hands on me, to hurry my tale.

"I saw her and Mayenne and Lucas and ever so many things," I told him. "And they had me flogged, and mademoiselle loves you."

"She does!" he cried, flushing. "Felix, does she? You cannot know."

"But I do know it," I answered, not very lucidly. "You see, she wouldn't have wept so much, just over me."

"Did she weep? Lorance?" he exclaimed.

"They flogged me," I said. "They didn't hurt me much. But she came down in the night with a candle and cried over me."

"And what said she? Now I am sorry they beat you. Who did that? Mayenne? What said she, Felix?"

"And then," I went on, not heeding his questions in sudden remembrance of my crowning news, "Mayenne and Lucas came in. And here is something you do not know, monsieur. Lucas is Paul de Lorraine, Henri de Guise's son."

"Mille tonnerres du ciel! But he is a Huguenot, a Rochelais!"

"Yes, but he is a son of Henri le Balafre. His mother was Rochelaise, I think. He was a spy for Navarre and captured at Ivry. They were going to hang him when Mayenne, worse luck, recognized him for a nephew. Since then he has been spying for them. Because Mayenne promised him Mlle. de Montluc in marriage."

He stared at me with dropped jaw, absolutely too startled to swear.

"He has not got her yet!" I cried. "Mayenne told him he should have her when he had killed St. Quentin. And St. Quentin is alive."

"Great God!" said M. Etienne, only half aloud, dropping down on the arm of his chair, overcome to realize the issue that had hung on a paltry handful of pistoles. Then, recovering, himself a little, he cried:

"But she—mademoiselle?"

"You need give yourself no uneasiness there," I said. "Mademoiselle hates him."

"Does she know—"

"I think she understands quite well what Lucas is," I made answer. "Monsieur, I must tell you everything that happened from the beginning, or I shall never make it clear to you."

"Yes, yes, go on," he cried.

He sat down at table again, with the intention of eating his dinner as I talked, but precious few mouthfuls he took. At every word I spoke he got deeper into the interest of my tale. I never talked so much in my life, me, as I did those few days. I was always relating a history, to Monsieur, to mademoiselle, to M. Etienne, to—well, you shall know.

I had finished at length, and he burst out at me:

"You little scamp, you have all the luck! I never saw such a boy! Well do they call you Felix! Mordieu, here I lie lapped in bed like a baby, while you go forth knight-erranting. I must lie here with old Galen for all company, while you bandy words with the Generalissimo himself! And make faces at Lucas, and kiss the hands of mademoiselle! But I'll stand it no longer. I'm done with lying abed and letting you have all the fun. No; to-day I shall take part myself."

"But monsieur's arm—"

"Pshaw, it is well!" he cried. "It is a scratch—it is nothing. Pardieu, it takes more than that to put a St. Quentin out of the reckoning. To-day is no time for sloth; I must act."

"Monsieur—" I began, but he broke in on me:

"Nom de dieu, Felix, are we to sit idle while mademoiselle is carried off by that beast Lucas?"

"Of course not," I said. "I was only trying to ask what monsieur meant to do."

"To take the moon in my teeth," he cried.

"Yes, monsieur, but how?"

"Ah, if I knew!"

He stared at me as if he would read the answer in my face, but he found it as blank as the wall. He flung away and made a turn down the room, and came back to seize me by the arm.

"How are we to do it, Felix?" he demanded.

But I could only shrug my shoulders and answer:

"Sais pas."

He paced the floor once more, and presently faced me again with the declaration:

"Lucas shall have her only over my dead body."

"He will only have her own dead body," I said.

He turned away abruptly and stood at the window, looking out with unseeing eyes. "Lorance—Lorance," he murmured to himself. I think he did not know he spoke aloud.

"If I could get word to her—" he went on presently. "But I can't send you again. Should I write a letter—But letters are mischievous. They fall into the wrong hands, and then where are we?"

"Monsieur," I suggested, "if I could get a letter into the hands of Pierre, that lackey who befriended me—" But he shook his head.

"They know you about the place. It were safer to despatch one of these inn-men—if any had the sense to go rein in hand. Hang me if I don't think I'll go myself!"

"Monsieur," I said, "Lucas swore by all things sacred that he would never molest you more. Therefore you will do well to keep out of his way."

"My faith, Felix," he laughed, "you take a black view of mankind."

"Not of mankind, M. Etienne. Only of Lucas. Not of Monsieur, or you, or Vigo."

"And of Mayenne?"

"I don't make out Mayenne," I answered. "I thought he was the worst of the crew. But he let me go. He said he would, and he did."

"Think you he meant to let you go from the first?"

"Who knows?" I said, shrugging. "Lucas is always lying. But Mayenne—sometimes he lies and sometimes not. He's base, and then again he's kind. You can't make out Mayenne."

"He does not mean you shall," M. Etienne returned. "Yet the key is not buried. He is made up, like all the rest of us, of good and bad."

"Monsieur," I said, "if there is any bad in the St. Quentins I, for one, do not know it."

"Ah, Felix," he cried, "you may believe that till doomsday—you will—of Monsieur."

His face clouded a little, and he fell silent. I knew that, besides his thoughts of his lady, came other thoughts of his father. He sat gravely silent. But of last night's bitter distress he showed no trace. Last night he had not been able to take his eyes from the miserable past; but to-day he saw the future. A future not altogether flowery, perhaps, but one which, however it turned out, should not repeat the old mistakes and shames.

"Felix," he said at length, "I see nothing for it but to eat my pride."

I kept still in the happy hope that I should hear just what I longed to; he went on:

"I swore then that I would never darken his doors again; I was mad with anger; so was he. He said if I went with Gervais I went forever."

"Monsieur, if you repent your hot words, so does he."

"I must e'en give him the chance. If he do repent them, it were churlish to deny him the opportunity to tell me so. If he still maintain them, it were cowardly to shrink from hearing it. No, whatever Monsieur replies, I must go tell him I repent."

I came forward to kiss his hand, I was so pleased.

"Oh, you look very smiling over it," he cried. "Think you I like sneaking back home again like a whipped hound to his kennel?"

"But," I protested, indignant, "monsieur is not a whipped hound."

"Well, a prodigal son, as Lucas named me yesterday. It is the same thing."

"I have heard M. l'Abbe read the story of the prodigal son," I said. "And he was a vaurien, if you like—no more monsieur's sort than Lucas himself. But it says that when his father saw him coming a long way off, he ran out to meet him and fell on his neck."

M. Etienne looked not altogether convinced.

"Well, however it turns out, it must be gone through with. It is only decent to go to Monsieur. But even at that, I think I should not go if it were not for mademoiselle."

"You will beg his aid, monsieur?"

"I will beg his advice at least. For how you and I are to carry off mademoiselle under Mayenne's hand—well, I confess for the nonce that beats me."

"We must do it, monsieur," I cried.

"Aye, and we will! Come, Felix, you may put your knife in my dish. We must eat and be off. The meats have got cold and the wine warm, but never mind."

I did not mind, but was indeed thankful to get any dinner at all. Once resolved on the move, he was in a fever to be off; it was not long before we were in the streets, bound for the Hotel St. Quentin. He said no more of Monsieur as we walked, but plied me with questions about Mlle. de Montluc—not only as to every word she said, but as to every turn of her head and flicker of her eyelids; and he called me a dull oaf when I could not answer. But as we entered the Quartier Marais he fell silent, more Friday-faced than ever his lady looked. He had his fair allowance of pride, this M. Etienne; he found his own words no palatable meal.

However, when we came within a dozen paces of the gate he dropped, as one drops a cloak, all signs of gloom or discomposure, and approached the entrance with the easy swagger of the gay young gallant who had lived there. As if returning from a morning stroll he called to the sentry:

"Hola, squinting Charlot! Open now!"

"Morbleu, M. le Comte!" the fellow exclaimed, running to draw the bolts. "Well, this is a sight for sore eyes, anyway."

M. Etienne laughed out in pleasure. It put heart into him, I could see, that his first greeting should be thus friendly.

"Vigo didn't know what had become of you, monsieur," Chariot volunteered. "The old man wasn't in the best of tempers last night, after Lucas got away and you gave us the slip, too. He called us all blockheads and cursed idiots. Things were lively for a time, nom d'un chien!"

"Eh bien, I am found," M. Etienne returned. "In time we'll get Lucas, too. Is Monsieur back?"

"No, M. Etienne, not yet."

I think he was half sorry, half glad.

"Where's Vigo?" he demanded.

"Somewhere about. I'll find him for monsieur."

"No, stay at your post. I'll find him."

He went straight across the court and in at the door he had sworn never again to darken. Humility and repentance might have brought him there, but it was the hand of mademoiselle drew him over the threshold without a falter.

Alone in the hall was my little friend Marcel, throwing dice against himself to while the time away. He sprang up at sight of us, agleam with excitement.

"Well, Marcel," my master said, "and where is M. l'Ecuyer?"

"I think in the stables, monsieur."

"Bid him come to me in the small cabinet."

He turned with accustomed feet into the room at the end of the hall where Vigo kept the rolls of the guard. I, knowing it to be my duty to keep close at hand lest I be wanted, followed. Soon Marcel came flying back to say Vigo was on his way. M. Etienne thanked him, and he hung about, longing to pump me, and, in my lord's presence, not quite daring, till I took him by the shoulders and turned him out. I hate curiosity.

M. Etienne stood behind the table, looking his haughtiest. He was unsure of a welcome from the contumacious Vigo; I read in his eyes a stern determination to set this insolent servant in his place.

The big man entered, saluted, came straight over to his young lord's side, no whit hesitating, and said, as heartily as if there had never been a hard word between them:

"M. Etienne, I had liefer see you stand here than the king himself."

M. Etienne displayed the funniest face of bafflement. He had been prepared to lash rudeness or sullenness, to accept, de haut en bas, shamed contrition. But this easy cordiality took the wind out of his sails. He stared, and then flushed, and then laughed. And then he held out his hand, saying simply:

"Thank you, Vigo."

Vigo bent over to kiss it in cheerful ignorance of how that hand had itched to box his ears.

"What became of you last night, M. Etienne?" he inquired.

"I was hunting Lucas. When does Monsieur return, Vigo?"

"He thought he might be back to-day. But he could not tell."

"Have you sent to tell him about me?" he asked, colouring.

"No, I couldn't do that," Vigo said. "You see, it is quite on the cards that the Spanish gang may come hither to clean us out. I want every man I have if they do."

"I understand that," M. Etienne said, "but—"

"So long as you are innocent a day or two matters not," Vigo pronounced. "He will presently turn up here or send word that he will not return till the king comes in. But since you are impatient, M. le Comte, you can go to him at St. Denis. If he can get through the gates you can."

"Aye, but I have business in Paris. I mean to join King Henry, Vigo. There's glory going begging out there at St. Denis. It would like me well to bear away my share. But—"

He broke off, to begin again abruptly:

"Ah, Vigo, that still tongue of yours! You knew, then, that there was more cause of trouble between my father and me than the pistoles?"

"I knew he suspected you of a kindness for the League, monsieur. But you are cured of that."

"There you are wrong. For I never had it, and I am not cured of it. If I hung around the Hotel de Lorraine, it was not for politics; it was for petticoats."

Vigo made no answer, but the corners of his grim mouth twitched.

"That's no news, either? Well, then, since you know so much, you may as well know more. Step up, Felix, and tell your tale."

I did as I was bid, M. Etienne now and then taking the words out of my mouth in his eagerness, Vigo listening to us both with grave attention. I had for the second time in my career the pleasure of startling him out of his iron composure when I told him the true name and condition of Lucas. But at the end of the adventure all the comment he made was:

"A fool for luck."

"Well," said M. Etienne, impatiently, "is that all you have to say? What are we to do about it?"

"Do? Why, nothing."

"Nothing?" he cried, with his hand on his sword. "Nothing? And let that scoundrel have her?"

"That is M. de Mayenne's affair," Vigo said. "We can't help it."

"I will help it!" M. Etienne declared. "Mordieu! Am I to let that traitor, that spy, that soul of dirt, marry Mlle. de Montluc?"

"What Mayenne wishes he'll have," Vigo said. "Some day you will surely get a chance to fight Lucas, monsieur."

"And meantime he is to enjoy her?"

"It is a pity," Vigo admitted. "But there is Mayenne. Can we storm the Hotel de Lorraine? No one can drink up the sea."

"One could if he wanted to as much as I want mademoiselle," my lord declared.

But Vigo shook his head.

"Monsieur," he said gravely, "monsieur, you have a great chance. You have a sword and a good cause to draw it in. What more should a man ask in the world than that? Your father has been without it these three years, and for want of it he has eaten his heart out. You have been without it, and you have got yourself into all sorts of mischief. But now all that is coming straight. King Henry is turning Catholic, so that a man may follow him without offence to God. He is a good fellow and a first-rate general. He's just out there, at St. Denis. There's your place, M. Etienne."

"Not to-day, Vigo."

"Yes, M. Etienne, to-day. Be advised, monsieur," Vigo said with his steady persistence. "There is nothing to gain by staying here to drink up the sea. Mayenne will no more give your lady to you now than he would give her to Felix. And you can no more carry her off than could Felix. Mayenne will have you killed and flung into the Seine, as easy as eat breakfast."

"And you bid me grudge my life? Strange counsel from you, Vigo."

"No, monsieur, but I bid you not throw it away. We all hope to die afield, but we have a preference how and where. If you fell fighting for Navarre, I should be sorry; Monsieur would grieve deep. But we should say it was well; we grudged not your life to the country and the king. While, if you fall in this fool affair—"

"I fall for my lady," M. Etienne finished. "The bravest captain of them all does no better than that."

"M. Etienne, she is no wife for you. You cannot get her. And if you could 'twere pity. She is a Ligueuse, and you from now on are a staunch Kingsman. Give her up, monsieur. You have had this maggot in your brain this four years. Once for all, get it out. Go to St. Denis; take your troop among Biron's horse. That is the place for you. You will marry a maid of honour and die a marshal of France."

M. Etienne laid his arm around Vigo's shoulder with a smile.

"Good old Vigo! Vigo, tell me this; if you saw a marshal's baton waiting you in the field, and at home your dearest friend were alone and in peril, would you go off after glory?"

"Aye, if 'twas a hopeless business to stay, certes I would go."

"Oh, tell that in Bedlam!" M. Etienne cried. "You would do nothing of the sort. Was it to win glory you stayed three years in that hole, St. Quentin?"

"I had no choice, monsieur. My master was there."

"And my mistress is here! You may save your breath, Vigo; I know what I shall do. The eloquence of monk Christin wouldn't change me."

"What is your purpose, M. Etienne?" Vigo asked.

Indeed, there was a vagueness about his scheme as revealed to us.

"It is quite simple. I purpose to get speech with mademoiselle if I can contrive it, and I think I can. I purpose to smuggle her out of the Hotel de Lorraine—such feats have been accomplished before and may be again. Then I shall bring her here and hold her against all comers."

"No," Vigo said, "no, monsieur. You may not do that."

"Ventre bleu, Vigo!" his young lord cried.

"No," said Vigo. "I can't have her here, and Mayenne's army after her."

"Coward!" shouted M. Etienne.

I thought Vigo would take us both by the scruff of our necks and throw us out of the place. But he answered undisturbed:

"No, that is not the reason, monsieur. If M. le Duc told me to hold this house against the armies of France and Spain, I'd hold it till the last man of us was dead. But I am here in his absence to guard his hotel, his moneys, and his papers. I don't call it guarding to throw a firebrand among them. Bringing Mayenne's niece here would be worse than that."

"Monsieur would never hesitate! Monsieur is no chicken-heart!" M. Etienne cried. "If he were here, he'd say, 'We'll defend the lady if every stone in this house is pulled from its fellow!'"

A twinkle came into Vigo's eyes.

"I think that is likely true," he said. "Monsieur opposed the marriage as long as Mayenne desired it; but now that Mayenne forbids it, stealing the demoiselle is another pair of sleeves."

"Well, then," cried M. Etienne, all good humour in a moment, "what more do you want? We'll divert ourselves pouring pitch out of the windows on Mayenne's ruffians."

"No, M. Etienne, it can't be done. If M. le Duc were here and gave the command to receive her, that would be one thing. No one would obey with a readier heart than I. Mordieu, monsieur, I have no objection to succouring a damsel in distress; I have been in the business before now."

"Then why not now? Death of my life, Vigo! When I know, and you know, Monsieur would approve."

"I don't know it, monsieur," Vigo said. "I only think it. And I cannot move by my own guesswork. I am in charge of the house till Monsieur returns. I purpose to do nothing to jeopard it. But I interfere in no way with your liberty to proceed as you please."

"I should think not, forsooth!" M. Etienne blazed out furiously.

"I could," rejoined Vigo, with his maddening tranquillity. "I could order the guard—and they would obey—to lock you up in your chamber. I believe Monsieur would thank me for it. But I don't do it. I leave you free to act as it likes you."

My lord was white with ire.

"Who is master here, you or I?"

"Neither of us, M. le Comte. But Monsieur, leaving, put the keys in my hand, and I am head of the house till he returns. You are very angry, M. Etienne, but my shoulders are broad enough to bear it. Your madness will get no countenance from me."

"Hang you for an obstinate pig!" M. Etienne cried.

Vigo said no more. He had made plain his position; he had naught to add or retract. Yeux-gris's face cleared. After all, there was no use being angry with Vigo; one might as well make fists at the flow of the Seine.

"Very well." M. Etienne swallowed his wrath. "It is understood that I get no aid from you. Then I have nobody in the world with me save Felix here. But for all that I'll win my lady!"



XVIII

To the Bastille.

But Vigo proved better than his word. If he would give us no countenance, he gave freely good broad gold pieces. He himself suggested M. Etienne's need of the sinews of war, not in the least embarrassed or offended because he knew M. le Comte to be angry with him. He was no feather ruffled, serene in the consciousness that he was absolutely in the right. His position was impregnable; neither persuasion, ridicule, nor abuse moved him one whit. He had but a single purpose in life; he was born to forward the interests of the Duke of St. Quentin. He would forward them, if need were, over our bleeding corpses.

On top of all his disobedience and disrespect he was most amiable to M. Etienne, treating him with a calm assumption of friendliness that would have maddened a saint. Yet it was not hypocrisy; he liked his young lord, as we all did. He would not let him imperil Monsieur, but aside from that he wished him every good fortune in the world.

M. Etienne argued no more. He was wroth and sore over Vigo's attitude, but he said little. He accepted the advance of money—"Of course Monsieur would say, What coin is his is yours," Vigo explained—and despatched me to settle his score at the Three Lanterns.

I set out on my errand rather down in the mouth. We had accomplished nothing by our return to the hotel. Nay, rather had we lost, for we were both of us, I thought, disheartened by the cold water flung on our ambitions. I took the liberty of doubting whether perfect loyalty to Monsieur included thwarting and disobeying his heir. It was all very well for Monsieur to spoil Vigo and let him speak his mind as became not his station, for Vigo never disobeyed him, but stood by him in all things. But I imagined that, were M. Etienne master, Vigo, for all his years of service, would be packed off the premises in short order.

I walked along in a brown study, wondering how M. Etienne did purpose to rescue mademoiselle. His scheme, so far as vouchsafed to me, was somewhat in the air. I could only hope he had more in his mind than he had let me know. It seemed to me a pity not to be doing something in the matter, and though I had no particular liking for Hotel de Lorraine hospitality, I had very willingly been bound thither at this moment to try to get a letter to mademoiselle. But he would not send me.

"No," he had said, "it won't do. Think of something better, Felix."

But I could not, and so was taking my dull way to the inn of the Trois Lanternes.

The city wore a sleepy afternoon look. It was very hot, and few cared to be stirring. I saw nothing worth my notice until, only a stone's throw from the Three Lanterns, I came upon a big black coach standing at the door of a rival auberge, L'Oie d'Or. It aroused my interest at once, for a travelling-coach was a rare sight in the beleaguered city. As my master had said, this was not a time of pleasure-trips to Paris. I readily imagined that the owner of this chariot came on weighty business indeed. He might be an ambassador from Spain, a legate from Rome.

I paused by the group of street urchins who were stroking the horses and clambering on the back of the coach, to wonder whether it would be worth while to wait and see the dignitary come out. I was just going to ask the coachman a question or two concerning his journey, when he began to snap his whip about the bare legs of the little whelps. The street was so narrow that he could hardly chastise them without danger to me, so it seemed best to saunter off. The screaming urchins stopped just out of the reach of his lash and set to pelting mud at him with a right good will, but I was too old for that game. I reflected that I was charged with business for my master, and that it was nothing to me what envoys might come to Mayenne. I went on into the Three Lanterns.

The cabaret was absolutely deserted; one might have walked all about and carried off what he pleased, as from the sleeping palace in the tale. "This is a pretty way to keep an inn," I thought. "Where have all the lazy rascals got to?" Then I heard a confused murmur of voices and shuffle of feet from the back, and I went through into the passage where the staircase was.

Here were gathered, in a huddle, like scared sheep, some dozen of the serving-folk, men and maids, the lasses most of them in tears, the men looking scarce less terrified. Their gaze was fixed on the closed door of Maitre Menard's little counting-room, whence issued the shrill cry:

"Spare me, noble gentlemen! Spare a poor innkeeper! I swear I know nothing of his whereabouts."

As my footsteps sounded on the threshold, one and all spun round to look at me in fresh dread.

"Mon dieu, it is his lackey!" a chambermaid cried. In the next second a little wiry dame, her eyes blazing with fury, darted out of the group and seized me by the arm with a grip of her nails that made me think a panther had got me.

"So here you are," she screamed. I declare I thought she was going to bite me. "Oh-h-h, you and your fine master, that come here and devour our substance and never pay one sou, but bring ruin to the house! Now, go you straight in there and let them squeeze your throat awhile, and see how you like it yourself!"

She swept me across the passage like a whirlwind, opened the door, shoved me in, and banged it after me before I could collect my senses.

The room was small; it was very well filled up by a bureau, a strong box, a table, two chairs, three soldiers, one innkeeper, and myself.

The bureau stood by the window, with Maitre Menard's account-books on it. Opposite was the table, with a captain of dragoons on it. Of his two men, one took the middle of the room, amusing himself with the windpipe of Maitre Menard; the other was posted at the door. I was shot out of Mme. Menard's grasp into his, and I found his the gentler of the two.

"I say I know not where he went," Maitre Menard was gasping, black in the face from the dragoon's attentions. "He did not tell—I have no notion. Ah—" The breath failed him utterly, but his eyes, bloodshot and bulging, rolled toward me.

"What now?" the captain cried, springing to his feet. "Who are you?"

He wore under his breastplate what I took to be the uniform of the city guards. I had seen the like on the officer of the gate the night I entered Paris. He was a young man of a decidedly bourgeois appearance, as if he were not much, outside of his uniform.

"My name is Felix Broux," I said. "I came to pay a bill—"

"His servant," Maitre Menard contrived to murmur, the dragoon allowing him a breath.

"Oh, you are the Comte de Mar's servant, are you? Where have you left your master?"

"What do you want of him?" I asked in turn.

"Never you mind. I want him."

"But Mayenne said he should not be touched," I cried. "The Duke of Mayenne said himself he should not be touched."

"I know nothing about that," he returned, a trifle more civilly than he had spoken. "I have naught to do with the Duke of Mayenne. If he is friends with your master, M. de Mar may not stay behind bars very long. But I have the governor's warrant for his arrest."

"On what charge?"

"A trifle. Merely murder."

"Murder?"

"Yes, the murder of a lackey, one Pontou."

"But that is ridiculous!" I cried. "M. le Comte did not—"

I came to a halt, not knowing what to say. "Lucas—Paul de Lorraine killed him," was on the tip of my tongue, but I choked it down. To fling wild accusations against a great man's man were no wisdom. By accident I had given the officer the impression that we were friends of Mayenne. I should do ill to imperil the delusion. "M. le Comte—" I began again, and again stopped. I meant to say that monsieur had never left the inn last night; he could have had no hand in the crime. Then I bethought me that I had better not know the hour of the murder. "M. le Comte is a very grand gentleman; he would not murder a lackey," I got out at last.

"You can tell that to the judges," the captain rejoined.

At this I felt ice sliding down my spine. To be arrested as a witness was the last thing I desired.

"I know nothing whatever about it," I cried. "He seemed to me a very fine gentleman. But you can't always tell about these nobles. The Comte de Mar, I've only known him twenty-four hours. Until he engaged me as lackey, yesterday afternoon, I had never laid eyes on him. I know not what he has been about. He engaged me yesterday to carry a message for him to the Hotel St. Quentin. I came into Paris but night before last, and put up at the Amour de Dieu in the Rue Coupejarrets. Yesterday he employed me to run his errands, and last night brought me here with him. But I had never seen him till this time yesterday. I know nothing about him save that he seemed a very free-handed, easy master."

To a nice ear I might have seemed a little too voluble, but the captain only laughed at my patent fright.

"Oh, you need not look so whey-faced; I have no warrant for your arrest. I dare say you are as great a rogue as he, but the order says nothing about you. Don't swoon away; you are in no peril."

I was stung to be thought such a craven, but I pocketed the insult, and merely answered:

"I assure you, monsieur, I know naught of the matter." Yesterday I would have blurted out to him the whole truth; decidedly my experiences were teaching me something.

"Come now, I can't fool about here all day," he said impatiently. "Tell me where that precious master of yours is now. And be quicker about it than this old mule."

Maitre Menard, then, had told them nothing—staunch old loyalist. He knew perfectly that M. le Comte had gone home, and they had throttled him, and yet he had not told. Well, he should not lose by it.

"Monsieur is about the streets somewhere. On my life, I know not where. But I know he will be back here to supper."

"Oh, you don't know, don't you? Then perhaps Gaspard can quicken your memory."

At the word the soldier who had attended to Maitre Menard came over to me and taught me how it feels to be hanged. I said to myself that if I had talked like a dastard I was not one, and every time he let me speak I gasped, "I don't know." The room was black to me, and the sea roared in my ears, and I wondered whether I had done well to tell the lie. For had I said that my master was in the Hotel St Quentin, still those fellows would have found it no easy job to take him. Vigo might not be ready to defend Mlle. de Montluc, but he would defend Monsieur's heir to the last gasp. Yet I would not yield before the choking Maitre Menard had withstood, and I stuck to my lie.

Then I bethought me, while the room reeled about me and my head seemed like to burst, that perchance if they should keep me here a captive for M. le Comte's arrival he might really follow to see what had become of me. I turned sick with the fear of it, and resolved on the truth. But Gaspard's last gullet-gripe had robbed me of the power to speak. I could only pant and choke. As I struggled painfully for wind, the door was flung open before a tall young man in black. Through the haze that hung before my vision I saw the soldier seize him as he crossed the threshold. Through the noise of waters I heard the captain's cry of triumph.

"Oh, M. Etienne!" I gasped, in agony that my pain had been for nothing. Now all was lost. Then the blur lifted, and my amazed eyes beheld not my master, but—Lucas!

"How now, sirrah?" he cried to the dragoon. "Hands off me, knaves!" For the second soldier had seized his other arm.