“Pray, what is that?” he asked, evidently puzzled.  The truth never crossed his mind.

“This,” said I; and I took the red leathern box out of my pocket, and set it down on the table in front of the duke.  And I put my cigarette between my lips and leaned back in my chair.

CHAPTER XIII.

A Timely Truce.

I think that at first the Duke of Saint-Maclou could not, as the old saying goes, believe his eyes.  He sat looking from me to the red box, and from the red box back to my face.  Then he stretched out a slow, wavering hand and drew the box nearer to him till it rested in the circle of his spread-out arm and directly under his poring gaze.  He seemed to shrink from opening it; but at last he pressed the spring with a covert timid movement of his finger, and the lid, springing open, revealed the Cardinal’s Necklace.

It seemed to be more brilliant than I had ever seen it, in the light of the lamp that stood on the table by us; and the duke looked at it as a magician might at the amulet which had failed him, or a warrior at the talisman that had proved impotent.  And I, moved to a sudden anger with him for tempting the girl with such a bribe, said bitterly and scornfully, with fresh indignation rising in me: 

“It was a high bid!  Strange that you could not buy her with it!”

He paid no visible heed to my taunt; and his tone was dull, bewildered, and heavy as, holding the box still in his curved arm, he asked slowly: 

“Did she give it to you to give to me?”

“She gave it to me to give to your wife.”  He looked up with a start.  “But your wife would not take it of her.  And when I returned from my errand she was gone—­where I know not.  So I decided to send it back to you.”

He did not follow, or took very little interest in my brief history.  He did not even reiterate his belief that I knew Marie’s whereabouts.  His mind was fixed on another point.

“How did you know she had it?” he asked.

“I found her with it on the table before her—­”

“You found her?”

“Yes; I went into her sitting room and found her as I say; and she was sobbing; and I got from her the story of it.”

“She told you that?”

“Yes; and she feared to send it back, lest you should come and overbear her resistance.  I supposed you had frightened her.  But neither would she keep it—­”

“You bade her not,” he put in, in a quick low tone.

“If you like, I prayed her not.  Did it need much cleverness to see what was meant by keeping it?”

His mouth twitched.  I saw the tempest rising again in him.  But for a little longer he held it down.

“Do you take me for a fool?” he asked.

“Am I a boy—­do I know nothing of women?  And do I know nothing of men?”

And he ended in a miserable laugh, and then fell again to tugging his mustache with his shaking hand.