for what?' said Madame de Quinet, nearly
laughing.

'Ah! for the angry, passionate thoughts I had! Ah! Madame, I was all
but giving the stuff to my little angel in very spite--and then---'
Eutacie's voice was drowned in passion of tears, and she devoured the
old lady's hand with her kisses.

'Come, come,' said the Duchess, 'let us be reasonable. A man may be a
thief, but it does not follow that he is a poisoner.'

'Nay, that will we see,' cried Eutacie. 'He was resolved that the little
lamb should not escape, and he left a flask for her with Mademoiselle
Perrot. I will fetch it, if Madame will give me leave. Oh, the great
mercy of Heaven that made her so well that I gave her none!'

Madame de Quinet's analytic powers did not go very far; and would
probably have decided against the syrup if it had been nothing but
virgin honey. She was one who fully believed that her dear Queen Jeanne
had been poisoned with a pair of gloves, and she had unlimited faith in
the powers of evil possessed by Rene of Milan. Of course, she detected
the presence of a slow poison, whose effects would have been attributed
to the ailment it was meant to cure; and though her evidence was
insufficient, she probably did Ercole no injustice. She declined testing
the compound on any unfortunate dog or cat, but sealed it up in the
presence of Gardon, Eutacie, and Mademoiselle Perrot, to be produced
against the pedlar if ever he should be caught.

Then she asked Eutacie if there was any reason to suspect that he
recognized her. Eutacie related the former dealings with him, when she
had sold him her jewels and her hair, but she had no notion of his being
the same person whom she had seen when at Montpipeau. Indeed, he had
altered his appearance so much that he had been only discovered at
Nid-de-Merle by eyes sharpened by distrust of his pretensions to magic
arts.

Madame de Quinet, however, concluded that Eutacie had been known, or
else that her jewels had betrayed her, and that the man must have been
employed by her enemies. If it had not been the depth of winter, she
would have provided for the persecuted lady's immediate transmission
to England; but he storms of the Bay of Biscay would have made this
impossible in the state of French navigation, even if Isaac Gardon had
been in a condition to move; for the first return of cold had brought
back severe rheumatic pains, and with them came a shortness of breath
which even the Duchess did not know to