“What will you do with him, monsieur?”

“We’ll have him out,” said Mayenne.  Lucas, needing no second bidding, hastened down the room.

All this while mademoiselle, on the floor at my feet, had neither stirred nor whispered, as rigid as the statued Virgin herself.  But now she rose and for one moment laid her hand on my shoulder with an encouraging pat; the next she flung the door wide just as Lucas reached the threshold.

He recoiled as from a ghost.

“Lorance!” he gasped, “Lorance!”

“Nom de dieu!” came Mayenne’s shout from the back of the room.  “What!  Lorance!”

He caught up the candelabrum and strode over to us.

Mademoiselle stepped out into the council-room, I hanging back on the other side of the sill.  She was as white as linen, but she lifted her head proudly.  She had not the courage that knows no fear, but she had the courage that rises to the need.  Crouching on the oratory floor she had been in a panic lest they find her.  But in the moment of discovery she faced them unflinching.

“You spying here, Lorance!” Mayenne stormed at her.

“I did not come here to spy, monsieur,” she answered.  “I was here first, as you see.  Your presence was as unlooked for by me as mine by you.”

His next accusation brought the blood in scarlet flags to her pale cheeks; she made him no answer but burned him with her indignant eyes.

“Mordieu, monsieur!” Lucas cried.  “This is Mlle. de Montluc.”

“Then why did you come?” demanded Mayenne.

“Because I had done harm to the lad and was sorry,” she said.  “You defend me now, Paul, but you did not hesitate to make a tool of me in your cowardly schemes.”

“It was kindly meant, mademoiselle,” Lucas retorted.  “Since I shall kill M. le Comte de Mar in any case, I thought it would pleasure you to have a word with him first.”

I think it did not need the look she gave him to make him regret the speech.  This Lucas was an extraordinary compound of shrewdness and recklessness, one separating from the other like oil and vinegar in a sloven’s salad.  He could plan and toil and wait, to an end, with skill and fortitude and patience; but he could not govern his own gusty tempers.

“You have been crying, Lorance,” Mayenne said in a softer tone.

“For my sins, monsieur,” she answered quickly.  “I am grieved most bitterly to have been the means of bringing this lad into danger.  Since Paul cozened me into doing what I did not understand, and since this is not the man you wanted but only his servant, will you not let him go free?”

“Why, my pretty Lorance, I did not mean to harm him,” Mayenne protested, smiling.  “I had him flogged for his insolence to you; I thought you would thank me for it.”

“I am never glad over a flogging, monsieur.”

“Then why not speak?  A word from you and it had stopped.”