“We are going, little one,” Diane murmured reassuringly.  But I noticed that the speaker’s animation, which had been as a soul to her beauty when she entered the room, was gone.  A strange stillness was it fear of the Vidame? had taken its place.

“The Abbess of the Ursulines?” Bezers continued thoughtfully.  “She brought you here, did she?” There was surprise, genuine surprise, in his voice.  “A good soul, and, I think I have heard, a friend of yours.  Umph!”

“A very dear friend,” Madame answered stiffly.  “Now, Diane!”

“A dear friend!  And she spirited you hither yesterday!” commented the Vidame, with the air of one solving an anagram.  “And Mirepoix detained you; respectable Mirepoix, who is said to have a well-filled stocking under his pallet, and stands well with the bourgeoisie.  He is in the plot.  Then at a very late hour, your affectionate sister, and my good friend the Coadjutor, enter to save you.  From what?”

No one spoke.  The priest looked down, his cheeks livid with anger.

“From what?” Bezers continued with grim playfulness.  “There is the mystery.  From the clutches of this profligate Mirepoix, I suppose.  From the dangerous Mirepoix.  Upon my honour,” with a sudden ring of resolution in his tone, “I think you are safer here; I think you had better stay where you are, Madame, until morning!  And risk Mirepoix!”

“Oh, no! no!” Madame cried vehemently.

“Oh, yes! yes!” he replied.  “What do you say, Coadjutor?  Do you not think so?”

The priest looked down sullenly.  His voice shook as he murmured in answer, “Madame will please herself.  She has a character, M. le Vidame.  But if she prefer to stay here—­well!”

“Oh, she has a character, has she?” rejoined the giant, his eyes twinkling with evil mirth, “and she should go home with you, and my old friend Madame d’O, to save it!  That is it, is it?  No, no,” he continued when he had had his silent laugh out, “Madame de Pavannes will do very well here—­very well here until morning.  We have work to do.  Come.  Let us go and do it.”

“Do you mean it?” said the priest, starting and looking up with a subtle challenge—­almost a threat—­in his tone.

“Yes, I do.”

Their eyes met:  and seeing their looks, I chuckled, nudging Croisette.  No fear of their discovering us now.  I recalled the old proverb which says that when thieves fall out, honest men come by their own, and speculated on the chance of the priest freeing us once for all from M. de Bezers.

But the two were ill-matched.  The Vidame could have taken up the other with one hand and dashed his head on the floor.  And it did not end there.  I doubt if in craft the priest was his equal.  Behind a frank brutality Bezers—­unless his reputation belied him—­concealed an Italian intellect.  Under a cynical recklessness he veiled a rare cunning and a constant suspicion; enjoying in that respect a combination of apparently opposite qualities, which I have known no other man to possess in an equal degree, unless it might be his late majesty, Henry the Great.  A child would have suspected the priest; a veteran might have been taken in by the Vidame.