the foil that gave it, for the
whole of this has risen, as you ought to know, from your sending me to
France."

"And that is true, in a sense, my good sophist. But I was, in that, the
unconscious and blameless link in your accursed destiny. I had you sent
to France on a plain mission. It was not, I make bold to say, a mission
on which the Government would have sent any man but a shrewd one and
a gentleman, and I was mad enough to think Simon Mac-Taggart was both.
When you were in Paris as our agent--"

"Fah!" cried Simon, snapping his fingers and drawing his face in a
grimace. "Agent, quo' he! for God's sake take your share of it and say
spy and be done with it!"

The Duke shrugged his shoulders, listening patiently to the
interruption. "As you like," said he. "Let us say spy, then. You were to
learn what you could of the Pretender's movements, and incidentally
you were to intromit with certain of our settled agents at Versailles.
Doubtless a sort of espionage was necessary to the same. But I make
bold to say the duty was no ignoble one so long as it was done with
some sincerity and courage, for I count the spy in an enemy's country is
engaged upon the gallantest enterprise of war, using the shrewdness that
alone differs the quarrel of the man from the fury of the beast, and
himself the more admirable, because his task is a thousand times more
dangerous than if he fought with the claymore in the field."

"Doubtless! doubtless!" said the Chamberlain. "That's an old tale
between the two of us, but you should hear the other side upon it."

"No matter; we gave you the credit and the reward of doing your duty as
you engaged, and yet you mixed the business up with some extremely dirty
work no sophistry of yours or mine will dare defend. You took our money,
MacTaggart--and you sold us! Sit down, sit down and listen like a man!
You sold us; there's the long and the short of it, and you sold our
friends at Versailles to the very people you were sent yourself to act
against. Countersap with a vengeance! We know now where Bertin got his
information. You betrayed us and the woman Cecile Favart in the one
filthy transaction."

The Chamberlain showed in his face that the blow was home. His mouth
broke and he grew as grey as a rag.

"And that's the way of it?" he said, after a moment's silence.

"That's the way of it," said the Duke. "She was as much the agent--let
us say the spy, then--as you were yourself, and seems to have