“I’ll have your neck wrung for this,” he panted.

“For what, monsieur?” asked Lucas, imperturbably.  “For defending myself?”

Mayenne let the charge go by default.

“For coming to me with the tale of your failures.  Nom de dieu, do I employ you to fail?”

“We are none of us gods, monsieur.  You yourself lost Ivry.”

Mayenne backed over to his chair and seated himself, laying his knife on the table in front of him.  His face smoothed out to good humour—­no mean tribute to his power of self-control.  For the written words can convey no notion of the maddening insolence of Lucas’s bearing—­an insolence so studied that it almost seemed unconscious and was thereby well-nigh impossible to silence.

“Sit down,” bade the duke, “and tell me.”

Lucas, standing at the foot of the table, observed: 

“They turned you out of your bed, monsieur, to see me.  It was unnecessary severity.  My tale will keep till morning.”

“By Heaven, it shall not!” Mayenne shouted.  “Beware how much further you dare anger me, you Satan’s cub!”

He was fingering the dagger again as if he longed to plunge it into Lucas’s gullet, and I rather marvelled that he did not, or summon his guard to do it.  For I could well understand how infuriating was Lucas.  He carried himself with an air of easy equality insufferable to the first noble in the land.  Mayenne’s chosen role was the unmoved, the inscrutable, but Lucas beat him at his own game and drove him out into the open of passion and violence.  It was a miracle to me that the man lived—­unless, indeed, he were a prince in disguise.

“Satan’s cub!” Lucas repeated, laughing.  “Our late king had called me that, pardieu!  But I knew not you acknowledged Satan in the family.”

“I ordered Antoine to wake me if you returned in the night,” Mayenne went on gruffly.  “When I heard you had been here I knew something was wrong—­unless the thing were done.”

“It is not done.  The whole plot is ruined.”

“Nom de dieu!  If it is by your bungling—­”

“It was not by my bungling,” Lucas answered with the first touch of heat he had shown.  “It was fate—­and that fool Grammont.”

“Explain then, and quickly, or it will be the worse for you.”

Lucas sat down, the table between them.

“Look here,” he said abruptly, leaning forward over the board.  “Have you Mar’s boy?”

“What boy?”

“A young Picard from the St. Quentin estate, whom the devil prompted to come up to town to-day.  Mar sent him here to-night with a love-message to Lorance.”

“Oh,” said Mayenne, slowly, “if it is a question of mademoiselle’s love-affairs, it may be put off till to-morrow.  It is plain to the very lackeys that you are jealous of Mar.  But at present we are discussing l’affaire St. Quentin.”

“It is all one,” Lucas answered quickly.  “You know what is to be the reward of my success.”