“Ha!” he cried eagerly.  “Then where has my wife been?”

“At the house of Mirepoix, the glover,” I answered coldly, “in the Rue Platriere.  Do you know him?  You do.  Well, she was kept there a prisoner, until we helped her to escape an hour or so ago.”

He did not seem to comprehend even then.  I could see little of his face, but there was doubt and wonder in his tone when he spoke.  “Mirepoix the glover,” he murmured.  “He is an honest man enough, though a Catholic.  She was kept there!  Who kept her there?”

“The Abbess of the Ursulines seems to have been at the bottom of it,” I explained, fretting with impatience.  This wonder was misplaced, I thought; and time was passing.  “Madame d’O found out where she was,” I continued, “and took her home, and then sent me to fetch you, hearing you had crossed the river.  That is the story in brief.”

“That woman sent you to fetch me?” he repeated again.

“Yes,” I answered angrily.  “She did, M. de Pavannes.”

“Then,” he said slowly, and with an air of solemn conviction which could not but impress me, “there is a trap laid for me!  She is the worst, the most wicked, the vilest of women!  If she sent you, this is a trap!  And my wife has fallen into it already!  Heaven help her—­and me—­if it be so!”

CHAPTER VIII.

The Parisian matins.

There are some statements for which it is impossible to be prepared; statements so strong and so startling that it is impossible to answer them except by action—­by a blow.  And this of M. de Pavannes was one of these.  If there had been any one present, I think I should have given him the lie and drawn upon him.  But alone with him at midnight in the shadow near the bottom of the Rue des Fosses, with no witnesses, with every reason to feel friendly towards him, what was I to do?

As a fact, I did nothing.  I stood, silent and stupefied, waiting to hear more.  He did not keep me long.

“She is my wife’s sister,” he continued grimly.  “But I have no reason to shield her on that account!  Shield her?  Had you lived at court only a month I might shield her all I could, M. de Caylus, it would avail nothing.  Not Madame de Sauves is better known.  And I would not if I could!  I know well, though my wife will not believe it, that there is nothing so near Madame d’O’s heart as to get rid of her sister and me—­of both of us—­that she may succeed to Madeleine’s inheritance!  Oh, yes, I had good grounds for being nervous yesterday, when my wife did not return,” he added excitedly.

“But there at least you wrong Madame d’O!” I cried, shocked and horrified by an accusation, which seemed so much more dreadful in the silence and gloom—­and withal so much less preposterous than it might have seemed in the daylight.  “There you certainly wrong her!  For shame!  M. de Pavannes.”