She shrugged her shoulders, neither assenting nor denying.  “We are all pawns in the game for M. de Mayenne to push about as he chooses.  For a time M. de Mar was high in his favour.  Then my cousin Paul came back after a two years’ disappearance, and straightway he was up and M. de Mar was down.  And then Paul vanished again as suddenly as he had come, and it became the turn of M. de Brie.  Now to-night Paul walked in as suddenly as he had left and at once played on me to write that unlucky letter.  And what it bodes for him I know not.”

She spoke with amazing frankness; yet, much as she had told me, the fact of her telling it told me even more.  I saw that she was as lonely in this great house as I had been at St. Quentin.  She would have talked delightedly to M. le Comte’s dog.

“Mademoiselle,” I said, “I would like well to tell you what has been happening to my M. Etienne this last month, if you are not afraid to stay long enough to hear it.”

“Oh, every one is asleep long ago; it is past two o’clock.  Yes, you may tell me if you wish.”

She sat down on a praying-cushion, motioning me to the other, and I began my tale.  At first she listened with a little air of languor, as if the whole were of slight consequence and she really did not care at all what M. le Comte had been about these five weeks.  But as I got into the affair of the Rue Coupejarrets she forgot her indifference and leaned forward with burning cheeks, hanging on my words with eager questions.  And when I told her how Lucas had evaded us in the darkness, she cried: 

“Blessed Virgin!  M. de Mar has enough to contend with in this Lucas, without Paul de Lorraine, and Brie, and the Duke of Mayenne himself.”

I was silent, being of her opinion.  Presently she asked reluctantly: 

“Does your master think this Lucas a tool of M. de Mayenne’s?”

“Yes, mademoiselle.  He says secretaries do not plot against dukedoms for their own pleasure.”

“Asassination was not wont to be my cousin Mayenne’s way,” she said with an accent of confidence that rang as false as a counterfeit coin.  I saw well enough that mademoiselle did fear, at least, Mayenne’s guilt.  I thought I might tell her a little more.

“M. le Comte told me that since his father’s coming to Paris M. de Mayenne made him offers to join the League, and he refused them.  So then M. de Mayenne, seeing himself losing the whole house of St. Quentin, invented this.”

“But it failed.  Thank God, it failed!  And now he will leave Paris.  He will—­he must!”

“He did mean to seek Navarre’s camp to-morrow,” I answered; “but—­”

“But what?”

“But then the letter came.”

“But that makes no difference!  He must go for all that.  The time is over for trimming.  He must stand on one side or the other.  I am a Ligueuse born and bred, and I tell him to go to King Henry.  It is his father’s side; it is his side.  He cannot stay in Paris another day.”