“I thought you told me you had failed.”

Lucas’s hand moved instinctively to his belt; then he thought better of it and laid both hands, empty, on the table.

“Our plot has failed; but that does not mean that St. Quentin is immortal.”

“You may be very sure of one thing, my friend,” the duke observed.  “I shall never give Lorance de Montluc to a white-livered flincher.”

“The Duke of St. Quentin is not immortal,” Lucas repeated.  “I have missed him once, but I shall get him in spite of all.”

“I am not sure about Lorance even then,” said Mayenne, reflectively.  “Francois de Brie is agitating himself about that young mistress.  And he has not made any failures—­as yet.”

Lucas sprang to his feet.

“You swore to me I should have her.”

“Permit me to remind you again that you have not brought me the price.”

“I will bring you the price.”

“E’en then,” spoke Mayenne, with the smile of the cat standing over the mouse—­“e’en then I might change my mind.”

“Then,” said Lucas, roundly, “there will be more than one dead duke in France.”

Mayenne looked up at him as unmoved as if it were not in the power of mortal man to make him lose his temper.  In stirring him to draw dagger, Lucas had achieved an extraordinary triumph.  Yet I somehow thought that the man who had shown hot anger was the real man; the man who sat there quiet was the party leader.

He said now, evenly: 

“That is a silly way to talk to me, Paul.”

“It is the truth for once,” Lucas made sullen answer.

So long as he could prick and irritate Mayenne he preserved an air of unshakable composure; but when Mayenne recovered patience and himself began to prick, Lucas’s guard broke down.  His voice rose a key, as it had done when I called him fool; and he burst out violently: 

“Mort de dieu! monsieur, what am I doing your dirty work for?  For love of my affectionate uncle?”

“It might well be for that.  I have been your affectionate uncle, as you say.”

“My affectionate uncle, you say?  My hirer, my suborner!  I was a Protestant; I was bred up by the Huguenot Lucases when my father cast off my mother and me to starve.  I had no love for the League or the Lorraines.  I was fighting in Navarre’s ranks when I was made prisoner at Ivry.”

“You were spying for Navarre.  It was before the fight we caught you.  You had been hanged and quartered in that gray dawn had I not recognized you, after twelve years, as my brother’s son.  I cut the rope from you and embraced you for your father’s sake.  You rode forth a cornet in my army, instead of dying like a felon on the gallows.”

“You had your ends to serve,” Lucas muttered.

“I took you into my household,” Mayenne went on.  “I let you wear the name of Lorraine.  I did not deny you the hand of my cousin and ward, Lorance de Montluc.”