“Madame,” he stammered at last, “you know quite well that—­”

“Seeing is believing!”

“That I thought it was you!”

“Oh, what I have lost!” she replied.  And she looked archly at Suzanne, who giggled and tossed her head.

He was growing angry.  “But, Madame,” he protested, “you know—­”

“I know what I know, and I have seen what I have seen!” Madame answered merrily.  And she hummed,

   “’Ce fut le plus grand jour d’este
   Que m’embrassa la belle Suzanne!’

Oh yes, I know what I know!” she repeated.  And she fell again to laughing immoderately; while the pretty piece of mischief beside her hung her head, and, putting a finger in her mouth, mocked him with an affectation of modesty.

The young man glowered at them between rage and embarrassment.  This was not the reception, nor this the hero’s return to which he had looked forward.  And a doubt began to take form in his mind.  The mistress he had pictured would not laugh at kisses given to another; nor forget in a twinkling the straits through which he had come to her, the hell from which he had plucked himself!  Possibly the court ladies held love as cheap as this, and lovers but as playthings, butts for their wit, and pegs on which to hang their laughter.  But—­but he began to doubt, and, perplexed and irritated, he showed his feelings.

“Madame,” he said stiffly, “a jest is an excellent thing.  But pardon me if I say that it is ill played on a fasting man.”

Madame desisted from laughter that she might speak.  “A fasting man?” she cried.  “And he has eaten two partridges!”

“Fasting from love, Madame.”

Madame St. Lo held up her hands.  “And it’s not two minutes since he took a kiss!”

He winced, was silent a moment, and then seeing that he got nothing by the tone he had adopted he cried for quarter.

“A little mercy, Madame, as you are beautiful,” he said, wooing her with his eyes.  “Do not plague me beyond what a man can bear.  Dismiss, I pray you, this good creature—­whose charms do but set off yours as the star leads the eye to the moon—­and make me the happiest man in the world by so much of your company as you will vouchsafe to give me.”

“That may be but a very little,” she answered, letting her eyes fall coyly, and affecting to handle the tucker of her low ruff.  But he saw that her lip twitched; and he could have sworn that she mocked him to Suzanne, for the girl giggled.

Still by an effort he controlled his feelings.  “Why so cruel?” he murmured, in a tone meant for her alone, and with a look to match.  “You were not so hard when I spoke with you in the gallery, two evenings ago, Madame.”

“Was I not?” she asked.  “Did I look like this?  And this?” And, languishing, she looked at him very sweetly after two fashions.

“Something.”

“Oh, then I meant nothing!” she retorted with sudden vivacity.  And she made a face at him, laughing under his nose.  “I do that when I mean nothing, Monsieur!  Do you see?  But you are Gascon, and given, I fear, to flatter yourself.”