In the little silence Monsieur found his moment and his words.

“Sire, may I interrupt mademoiselle?  Last night, for the first time in a month, I saw my son.  He was just returned from an adventure under her window.  Mayenne’s guard had set on him, and he was escaped by the skin of his teeth.  He declared to me that never till he was slain should he cease endeavour to win Mlle. de Montluc.  And I?  Marry, I ate my words in humblest fashion.  After three years I made my surrender.  Since you are his one desire, mademoiselle, then are you my one desire.  I bade him God-speed.”

She gave her hand to Monsieur, sudden tears welling over her lashes.

“Monsieur, I thought to-night I had no friends.  And I have so many!”

“Mademoiselle,” the king cried in the same breath, “fear not.  I will get you your lover if I sell France for him.”

She brushed the tears away and smiled on him.

“I have no fear, Sire.  With you and M. de St. Quentin to save him, I can have no fear.  But he is in desperate case.  Has M. de St. Quentin told you of his secretary Lucas, my cousin Paul de Lorraine?”

“Aye,” said the king, “it is a dolourous topic—­very painful!  Eh, Rosny?”

“I do not shrink from my pains, Sire,” M. de Rosny answered quietly.  “I hold myself much to blame in this matter.  I thought I knew the Lucases root and branch—­I did not discover that a daughter of the house had ever been a friend to Henri de Guise.”

“And how should you discover it?” the king demanded.  He had made the attack; now, since Rosny would not resent it, he rushed himself to the defence.  “How were you to dream it?  Henri de Guise’s side was the last place to look for a girl of the Religion.  But I forgive him.  If he stole a Rochelaise, we have avenged it deep:  we have stolen the flower of Lorraine.”

“Paul Lucas—­Paul de Lorraine,” she went on eagerly, “was put into M. le Duc’s house to kill him.  He went all the more willingly that he believed M. de Mar to be my favoured suitor.  He tried to draw M. de Mar into the scheme, to ruin him.  He failed.  And the whole plot came to naught.”

“I have learned that,” the king said.  “I have been told how a country boy stripped his mask off.”

He glanced around suddenly at me where I stood red and abashed.  He was so quick that he grasped everything at half a word.  Instantly he had turned to the lady again.  “Pray continue, dear mademoiselle.”

“Afterward—­that is, yesterday—­Paul went to M. de Belin and swore against M. de Mar that he had murdered a lackey in his house in the Rue Coupejarrets.  The lackey was murdered there, but Paul de Lorraine did it.  The man knew the plot; Paul killed him to stop his tongue.  I heard him confess it to M. de Mayenne.  I and this Felix Broux were in the oratory and heard it.”

“Then M. de Mar was arrested?”