ws too much. We
cannot let her go thus."

"Knows too much? How?" and the citizen tossed his head like a bull
balked in his charge. "What does she know?"

"His majesty----"

"Nay, let his majesty speak for himself--for once," said the man with
the grey eyes; and even in her terror and confusion Madeline saw that
all turned to him with a single movement. "Mistress Toussaint did but
chat with La Noue and myself, during her father's absence. True, she
knows us; or one of us. But if any be to blame it is I. Let her stay. I
will answer for her fidelity."

"Nay, but she is a woman, sire," some one objected.

"Ay, she is, good Poulain," and Henry turned to the speaker with a
singularly bright smile. "So we are safe; for there is no woman in
France would betray Henry of Bourbon!"

A laugh went round. Some one mentioned the Duchess.

"True!" said Henry, for Henry it was, he whom the Leaguers called the
Bearnais and the Politiques the King of Navarre, but whom later
generations have crowned as the first of French kings--Henry the Great.
"True! I had forgotten her. I must beware of her golden scissors. We
have two crowns already, and want not another of her making. But come,
let us to business without farther delay. Be seated, gentlemen; be
seated without ceremony: and while we consider whether our plans hold
good, Mistress Toussaint--" he paused and turned, to look kindly at the
terrified girl--"will play the sentry for us."

Madeline's presence within a few feet of their council-board was soon
forgotten by the eager men who sat round the table. And in a sense she
forgot them. She heard, it is true, their hopes and plans, of which the
chief, and that which brought them together to-day, was a scheme to
surprise Paris by introducing men hidden in carts laden with hay. She
heard how Henry and La Noue had entered, and who had brought them in,
and how it was proposed to smuggle them out again; and many details of
men and means and horses; and who were loyal and who disaffected, and
who might be bought over, and at what price. She even took note of the
manner of each speaker as he leaned forward, and brought his face within
the circle of light, marking who were known to her before, substantial
citizens these, constant at mass and market; and who were strangers, men
fiercer looking, thinner, haughtier, more restless, with the stamp of
constant peril at the corners of their eyes, and swords some inches
longer than their neighbou