“And his henchman, St. Quentin.”

“Not so,” she cried.  “He was here in Paris when it happened.  He was revolted at the deed.”

“Did they teach you that at the convent?”

“No, but it is true.  M. de St. Quentin warned my cousin Henri not to go to Blois.”

“Pardieu, you think them angels, these St. Quentins.”

“I think them brave and honest gentlemen, as I think you, Cousin Charles.”

“That sounds ill on the lips that have but now called me villain and murderer,” Mayenne returned.

“I have not called you that, monsieur; I said you had been saved from the guilt of murder, and I knew one day you would be glad.”

He kept silence, eying her in a puzzled way.  After a moment she went on: 

“Cousin Charles, it is our lot to live in such days of blood and turmoil that we know not any other way to do but injure and kill.  I think you are more harassed and troubled than any man in France.  You have Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots and half the provinces to fight in the field, and your own League to combat at home.  You must make favour with each of a dozen quarrelling factions, must strive and strive to placate and loyalize them all.  The leaders work each for his own end, each against the others and against you; and the truth is not in one of them, and their pledges are ropes of straw.  They intrigue and rebel and betray till you know not which way to turn, and you curse the day that made you head of the League.”

“I do curse the day Henri was killed,” Mayenne said soberly.  “And that is true, Lorance.  But I am head of the League, and I must do my all to lead it to success.”

“But not by the path of shame!” she cried quickly.  “Success never yet lay that way.  Henri de Valois slew our Henri, and see how God dealt with him!”

He looked at her fixedly; I think he heeded her words less than her shining, earnest eyes.  And he said at last: 

“Well, you shall have your boy, Lorance.”

“Ah, monsieur!”

With tears dimming the brightness of those sweet eyes she dropped on her knees before him, kissing his hand.

Lucas, since his one unlucky outburst, had said never a word but stood looking on with a ruefulness of visage that it warmed the cockles of my heart to see.

Certes, he was in no very pleasant corner, this dear M. Paul.  His mistress had heard his own lips describe his plot against the St. Quentins; there was no possibility of lying himself clear of it.  Out of his own mouth he was convicted of spycraft, treachery, and cowardly murder.  And in the Hotel de Lorraine, as in the Hotel de St. Quentin, his betrayal had come about through me.  I was unwitting agent in both cases; but that did not make him love me the more.  Could eyes slay, I had fallen of the glance he shot me over mademoiselle’s bowed head; but when she rose he said to her: 

“Mademoiselle, the boy is as much my prisoner as M. le Duc’s, since I got him here.  But I, too, freely give him up to you.”