“Ah,” said Monsieur, a new light breaking in upon him, “that was you, Felix?  I did not know you; I was thinking of other matters.  And Lucas took you for a miscreant.  Now I am sorry.”

If I had been a noble he could not have spoken franker apology.  But at once he was stern again.  “And because my secretary took you in all good faith for a possible assassin and struck you to save me, you turn traitor and take part in a plot to set on him and kill him!  I had believed that of some hired lackey, not of a Broux.”

“Monsieur, I was wrong—­a thousand times wrong.  I knew that as soon as I had sworn.  And when I found it was you they meant, I came to you, oath or no oath.”

“There spoke the Broux!” cried Monsieur with his brilliant smile.  “Now you are Felix.  Who are my would-be murderers?”

We had come round in a circle to the place where we had stuck before, and here we stuck again.

“Monsieur, I would tell you all before you could count ten—­tell you their names, their whereabouts, everything—­were it not for one man who stood my friend.”

The duke’s eyes flashed.

“You call him that—­my assassin!”

“He is an assassin,” I was forced to answer; “even Monsieur’s assassin—­and a perjurer.  But—­but, Monsieur, he saved my life from the other, at the risk of his own.  How can I pay him back by betraying him?”

“According to your own account, he betrayed you.”

“Aye, he lied to me,” I said brokenly.  “Yet Monsieur, if it were your own case and one had saved your life, were he the scum of the gutter, would you send him to his death?”

“To whom do you owe your first duty?”

“Monsieur, to you.”

“Then speak.”

But I could not do it.  Though I knew Yeux-gris for a villain, yet he had saved my life.

“Monsieur, I cannot.”

The duke cried out: 

“This to me!”

There was a silence.  I stood with hanging head, the picture of a shame-faced knave.  Shame so filled me that I could not look up to meet Monsieur’s sentence.  But when I had remembered the good hater in Monsieur, I should have remembered, too, the good lover.  Monsieur had been fond of me at St. Quentin.  As I waited for the lightning to strike, he said with utmost gentleness: 

“Felix, let me understand you.  In what manner did this man save your life?”

Now that was like my lord.  Though a hot man, he loved fairness and ever strove to do the just thing, and his patience was the finer that it was not his nature.  His leniency fired me with a sudden hope.

“Monsieur, there are four of them in the plot.  But one cannot be as vile as the others, since he saved my life.  Monsieur, if I tell you, will you let that one go?”

“I shall do as I see fit,” he answered, all the duke.  “Felix, will you speak?”

“If Monsieur will promise to let him go—­”