Lucas’s hand went to his belt again; he made one step as if to come around the table.  Mayenne’s angry eye was on him but he did not move; and Lucas made no more steps.  Controlling himself with an effort, he said: 

“It was not my fault, monsieur.  No man could have laboured harder or planned better than I. I have been diligent, I have been clever.  I have made my worst enemy my willing tool—­I have made Monsieur’s own son my cat’s-paw.  I have left no end loose, no contingency unprovided for—­and I am ruined by a freak of fate.”

“I never knew a failure yet but what the fault was fate’s,” Mayenne returned.

“Call it accident, then, call it the devil, call it what you like!” Lucas cried.  “I still maintain it was not my fault.  Listen, monsieur.”

He sat down again and began his story, striving as he talked to reconquer something of his old coolness.

“The thing was ruined by the advent of this boy, Mar’s lackey I spoke of.  You said he had not been here?”

“You may go to Lorance with that question,” Mayenne answered; “I have something else to attend to than the intrigues of my wife’s maids.”

“He started hither; I thought some one would have the sense to keep him.  Mordieu!  I will find from Lorance whether she saw him.”

He fell silent, gnawing his lip; I could see that his thought had travelled away from the plot to the sore subject of mademoiselle’s affections.

“Well,” said Mayenne, sharply, “what about your boy?”

It was a moment before Lucas answered.  When he did he spoke low and hurriedly, so that I could scarce catch the words.  I knew it was no fear of listeners that kept his voice down—­they had shouted at each other as if there was no one within a mile.  I guessed that Lucas, for all his bravado, took little pride in his tale, nor felt happy about its reception.  I could catch names now and then, Monsieur’s, M. Etienne’s, Grammont’s, but the hero of the tale was myself.

“You let him to the duke?” Mayenne cried presently.

At the harsh censure of his voice, Lucas’s rang out with the old defiance: 

“With Vigo at his back I did.  Sangdieu! you have yet to make the acquaintance of St. Quentin’s equery.  A regiment of your lansquenets couldn’t keep him out.”

“Does he never take wine?” Mayenne asked, lifting his hand with shut fingers over the table and then opening them.

“That is easy to say, monsieur, sitting here in your own hotel stuffed with your soldiers.  But it was not so easy to do, alone in my enemy’s house, when at the least suspicion of me they had broken me on the wheel.”

“That is the rub!” Mayenne cried violently.  “That is the trouble with all of you.  You think more of the safety of your own skins than of accomplishing your work.  Mordieu! where should I be to-day—­where would the Cause be—­if my first care was my own peril?”