The thought of him stirred her as nothing had ever before stirred her.  It was hate, it was wounded pride crying out for vengeance, it was the barb of scorn urging her to give back in kind.  And, heaven above! he had been on his knees, and she had dallied with the moment of revenge even as a cat dallies with a mouse.  Diane!  She detested the name.  Fool!  And yet, why was he here?  What was this sudden veil of mystery which hid him from her secret eyes?  Victor knew, and yet his love for her was not so great that he could tell her another’s secret.  And the governor knew, D’Herouville, and the vicomte; and they were as silent as stone.  Love?  A fillip of her finger for love!  Happy indeed was she to learn that neither the marquis nor the Chevalier would return to France on the Henri IV.  Such a way have the women.

Monsieur le Marquis lay in his bed, the bed from which he was to rise but once again in life.  His thin fingers had drawn the coverlet closely under his chin, and from time to time they worked spasmodically.  His head, scarce less white than the pillow beneath it, went on nodding from side to side, as if in perpetual negation to those puzzling questions which occupied his brain.  His eyebrows were constantly bending, and his grey eyes burned with a fever which was never to be subdued.  Across the foot of the bed lay a golden bar of morning sunlight.

“How long must I lie in this cursed bed?” he asked.

Brother Jacques left the window and came to the bedside.  “Perhaps a month, Monsieur; it all depends upon your patience.”

“Patience?  I have little against my account.  When does the Henri IV sail?”

“A week from to-day.”

“In bed or on foot, I shall sail with it.  I am weary of trees, and rocks, and water.  I desire to see the cobbles of Rochelle and Perigny before I die.  Have you no canary in this abominable land?”

“The physician denies you wine, Monsieur.”

“And what does that fool know about my needs?” demanded the invalid, stirring his feet as if striving to cast aside the sunlight.  “Draw the shutter; the sun bites into my eyes.  I abhor sunshine in bed.  I am seventy, and yet I have risen with the sun for more than sixty-five years.  Have you any books?”

“Only of a religious and sacred character, and a volume of the letters of the Order.”  Brother Jacques offered these without confidence.

“Drivel!  Find me something lively:  Monsieur Brantome, for instance.  Surely Monsieur de Lauson has these memoirs in his collection.”

“I shall make inquiries.”  Brother Jacques was not at ease.

A long pause ensued.

It was the marquis who broke it.  “Why do you come and stand at the side of the bed and stare at me when you suppose I am sleeping?  I have watched you, and it annoys me.”

“I shall do so no more, Monsieur.”

“But why?”