“And when you have none, you yet have three pairs of hands at Henry’s court to pull you up out of the mire.”

“I thank their graciousness, though I shall never need their offices,” Mayenne said grandly.  He stood there stately and proud and confident, the picture of princeliness and strength.  Last night at St. Denis it had seemed to me that no power could defy my king.  Now it seemed to me that no king could nick the power of my Lord Mayenne.  When suddenly, precisely like a mummer who in his great moment winks at you to let you know it is make-believe, the general-duke’s dignity melted into a smile.

“After all,” he said, “it’s as well to lay an anchor to windward.”

XXX

My young lord settles scores with two foes at once.

Occupied in wrangling with the grooms over the merits of our several stables, with the soldiers over politics and the armies, I awaited in a shady corner of the court the conclusion of formalities.  I had just declared that King Henry would be in Paris within a week, and was on the point of getting my crown cracked for it, when, as if for the very purpose—­save the mark!—­of rescuing me, entered from the street Lucas.  He approached rapidly, eyes straight in front of him, heeding us no whit; but all the loungers turned to stare at him.  Even then he paid no heed, passing us without a glance.  But the tall d’Auvray bespoke him.

“M. de Lorraine!  Any news?”

He started and turned to us in half-absent surprise, as if he had not known of our presence nor, indeed, quite realized it now.  He was both pale and rumpled, like one who has not closed an eye all night.

“Any news here?” he made Norman answer.

“No, monsieur, unless his Grace has information.  We have heard nothing.”

“And the woman?”

“Sticks to it mademoiselle told her never a word.”

Lucas stood still, his eyes travelling dully over the group of us, as if he expected somewhere to find help.  At the same time he was not in the least thinking of us.  He looked straight at me for a full minute before he awoke to my identity.

“You!”

“Yes, M. de Lorraine,” I said, with all the respectfulness I could muster, which may not have been much.  Considering our parting, I was ready for any violence.  But after the first moment of startlement he regarded me in a singularly lack-lustre way, while he inquired without apparent resentment how I came there.

“With M. le Duc de St. Quentin,” I grinned at him.  “We and M. de Mayenne are friends now.”

I could not rouse him even to curiosity, it seemed.  But he turned abruptly to the men with more life than he had yet shown.

“You’ve not told this fellow?”

“We understand our orders, monsieur,” d’Auvray answered, a bit huffed.

Now this was eminently the place for me to hold my tongue, but of course I could not.