e. It is what comes of this Austrian
Queen." Ah--she glanced around quickly to see that none but her
lady-in-waiting heard those last words.

"Show the man in," she added. The lady-in-waiting transmitted the order.
De Lotbiniere appeared, and at Madame's request began his narrative.

He had not proceeded far when the Marechale sent for Cyrene. It was the
kind of opportunity in which de Lotbiniere gloried. As soon as he
commenced she scanned him with intense attention, saying to herself,
"This is one of Germain's enemies." As he told his tale he too watched
her closely. The courage with which she listened to the development of a
story so deeply affecting her honour and her heart, and her perfect
dignity, unexpected by him, baffled him, from point to point of his
careful narration, where he had expected to produce effects.

"Of all women," he thought, "she is the strangest. Are my skill and
effort to be wasted on a girl?" But guessing correctly all at once and
rightly attributing her reticence to preparation and distrust of
himself, he stopped and said--

"He has doubtless told Madame a very different version."

"He has told me nothing of these things, sir," she answered quietly.

De Lotbiniere was nonplussed, but he had not yet come to the duels. He
now mentioned them.

"There have been two duels."

"_Mon dieu!_"

"I hope that your nephew punished him sharply," La Marechale
interrupted.

"The brute, unfortunately, has wounded my nephew, Madame."

"Is your brother-in-law, the Marquis de Repentigny, whom you mentioned,
he who killed a man named Philibert in Quebec?" now demanded Cyrene.

It was as if a thunderbolt struck de Lotbiniere.

"Who spoke to you of that?" he exclaimed hastily.

"Do you hear?" Cyrene cried excitedly, turning to La Marechale. "Do you
hear this admission of murder?"

"It was no murder!" de Lotbiniere interrupted, trembling with feeling.

"You apparently wish some finer term to describe it," she retorted.
"Sir, any charges made to me against my affianced must be supported by
individuals more free of terrible records. _I_ shall trust his innocence
through eternity." And with these words, uttered frigidly, she left the
room, the Marechale looking after her astonished.

Now Germain, having fled from Troyes, came to the hotel. He entered one
of the great salons, and, miserable and desperate, sent up his name to
Cyrene for a last interview. While he waited to be ushered up, to his
surp