“And shall I flee my dangers?  Shall I run, in the face of my peril?”

“Ah, monsieur, perhaps your life is nothing to you.  But it is more to me than tongue can tell.”

“My love, my love!” He snatched her into his arms; she held away from him to look him beseechingly in the face, her little clutching hands on his shoulders.

“Oh, you will go! you will go!”

“Only if you come with me.  Lorance, it is such a little way!  Only to meet me in the next square.  We will slip out of the gates together—­leave Paris and all its plots and murders, and at St. Denis keep our honeymoon.”

“Monsieur,” she said slowly, “I am told that my cousin Mayenne offered a month ago to give me to you for your name on the roster of the League.  Is that true?”

“It is true.  But you cannot think, Lorance, it was for any lack of love for you.  I swear to you—­”

“Nay, you need not.  I have it by heart that you love me.”

“Lorance!”

“But when you could not take me with honour you would not take me.  Your house stands against us; you would not desert your house.  Am I then to be false to mine?”

“A woman belongs to her husband’s house.”

“Aye, but she does not wed the enemy of her own.  Monsieur, you are full of loyalty; shall I have none?  I was born, my father before me, in the shadow of the house of Lorraine; the Lorraine princes our kinsmen, our masters, our friends.  When I was orphaned young, and penniless because King Henry’s Huguenots had wrenched our lands away, I came here to my cousin Mayenne, to dwell here in kindness and love as a daughter of the house.  Am I to turn traitor now?”

“Lorance,” he was fiercely beginning, when Mlle. de Tavanne bounded in.

“On guard!” she hissed at us.  “They come!”

She looked behind her into the corridor.  Mademoiselle gave her lips to monsieur in one last kiss, and slipped like water from his arms.  I was at his side, and we busied ourselves over the trinkets, he with shaking fingers, cheeks burning through the stain.

The ladies streamed into the room, the lovely Mme. de Montpensier alone conspicuous by her absence.  Mme. de Mayenne’s face was hot and angry, and bore marks of tears.  Not in this room only had a combat raged.

“Never shall he come into this house again,” madame was crying vigorously.  “I had had him strangled, the vile little beast, an she had not seized him.  I will now, if she ever dares bring him hither again.”

“You certainly should, madame,” replied the nearest of the ladies.  “You have been, in the goodness of your heart, far too forbearing, too patient under many presumptions.  One would suppose the mistress here to be Mme. de Montpensier.”

“I will show who is mistress here,” the Duchesse de Mayenne retorted.  Then her eye fell on Mlle. de Montluc, making her way softly to the door, and the vials of her wrath overflowed upon her: