, she sat down with a murmur of thanks, then she
turned to Commines. Drawing back a step La Mothe, half behind her,
rested, his hand on the chair-back, and the stage was set.

"Mademoiselle," began Commines, "Saxe, whom you know, told me a strange
story to-day, and it seemed to us it was your right to hear it as soon
as possible."

"Us? Who are us, Monsieur d'Argenton?"

"Monsieur La Mothe and myself."

"I agree with Monsieur d'Argenton that it is your right to hear it,"
said La Mothe, "but in everything else I disagree. For me your one
word to-day was enough."

"So that is why Monsieur d'Argenton is in Amboise?"

"The story is this," went on Commines, studiously ignoring the cold
contempt in her voice. But she interrupted him.

"Let Saxe tell his own story; why else is he here? It is always safer
to get such things first-hand. Now, Saxe?"

Turning her shoulder on Commines she confronted Saxe. She knew she
was, somehow, on her defence, but not the offence alleged against her.
All day La Mothe's unexpected question had troubled her, and vaguely
she had connected it with the attempt upon the Dauphin at the Burnt
Mill, though how she, the Dauphin's almost one friend in Amboise, could
have knowledge of the attempt she could not understand. With the
failure of the attack she had thought the incident closed, but now Jean
Saxe had a story to tell, a story in some way linked to Stephen La
Mothe's question, a question which flushed the pallor of even her
weariness when she remembered how widely it had differed from what her
thought had been.

But Jean Saxe was in no haste with his tale. Jean Saxe shuffled his
feet, licked his dry lips, and caught at his breath. His throat was
drier than Villon's had ever been, and Villon's was the driest throat
in Amboise. A modest man, though an innkeeper, Jean Saxe did not know
which way to look now that he was, for the moment, the centre of the
world. Either the grey eyes, their lids no longer drooping, searched
him out, or Commines' stern gaze stared him down, or, worst of all, he
met the sardonic light with which Villon beamed his satisfaction at a
scene quite to his humour, and so Jean Saxe was dumb, remembering that
Louis had many ways of paying his debts, and more went into Amboise
than came out again. For the trusted servant of so generous a King
Jean Saxe was not happy.

"Come, Saxe, come. Tell me what you told me this afternoon, neither
more nor less. There