sc's love has overcome both fear
and weakness, he is right, too, when he links Charles with her in her
abominable plot."

"But why has he sent----" La Mothe broke off lamely, remembering in
time that he had no right to say to Commines, Why has he sent such a
message of a father's love as lies in those saddle-bags I see in the
corner? Very naturally Commines misunderstood the interrupted sentence.

"Why has he sent you to Amboise?"

CHAPTER XII

LA MOTHE BELIEVES, BUT IS NOT CONVINCED

But having ended the sentence Commines broke off at the end as La Mothe
had done in the middle, and with much the same embarrassment. His
face, harsh and stern of feature both by nature and schooling, grew
almost tender as he turned aside troubled. To speak plainly to any man
of honour and generous spirit, answering his own question in direct
words, would have been difficult, but how much greater the difficulty
when the man was brother to that dear dead woman who had sunk to her
sleep comforted by his promise of care and protection? "Watch over
him, Philip, for my sake." But into the memory of the tired voice he
had loved there clashed the King's harsh question so curtly asked in
Valmy, and torn by the conflict of the two natures warring within him
Commines paced the room in silence. La Mothe was not the only man in
Amboise who found his skill as a circus-rider tried to the utmost, and
like La Mothe Commines temporized.

"Who are we to judge the King?" He spoke harshly, even aggressively,
and as if combating some undeveloped argument of La Mothe's. A burst
of temper may not convince a man's own conscience, or quiet its
uneasiness, but it silences its voice for a time as declamation can
always silence pleading. "Who are we to question his justice or deny
its right to strike? And it is as his arm of justice that you are here
in Amboise."

"I?" And into La Mothe's mind, as he stood silent after the startled
ejaculation, there flooded significant, misunderstood hints dropped by
the King in Valmy, and by Commines himself on the road to
Chateau-Renaud, hints which had seemed to him meaningless in the memory
of the little coat of mail which was the secret gift of a father's
love. "I, the King's arm of justice? In God's name how can that be?"

"The days of Brutus have gone by," answered Commines, never ceasing
from his restless pacing of the room. The motion eased the tension of
his nervous distress and made speech l