ould
not answer her question. It was sheer embarrassment and no intent of
rudeness that caused my short answer:

"About his own concerns, mademoiselle."

"The young puppy begins to growl!" exclaimed the thick-set soldierly
fellow who had bespoken me before, whose hostile gaze had never left my
face. "I'll have him flogged, mademoiselle, for this insolence."

"M. de Brie--" she began at the same moment that I cried out to her:

"I meant no insolence; I crave mademoiselle's pardon." I added, in my
haste floundering deeper into the mire: "Mademoiselle sees for herself
that I cannot tell about M. le Comte's affairs in this house."

Brie had me by the collar.

"So that is what has become of Mar!" he cried triumphantly. "I thought
as much. If Mar's affairs are to be a secret from this house, then, nom
de dieu, they are no secret."

He shook me back and forth as if to shake the truth out of me, till my
teeth rattled together; I could not have spoken if I would. But he cried
on, his voice rising with excitement:

"It has been no secret where St. Quentin stands and what he has been
about. He came into Paris, smooth and smiling, his own man,
forsooth--neither ours nor the heretic's! Mordieu! he was Henry's, fast
and sure, save that he was not man enough to say so. I told Mayenne last
month we ought to settle with M. de St. Quentin; I asked nothing better
than to attend to him. But the general would not, but let him alone,
free and unmolested in his work of stirring up sedition. And Mar, too--"

He stopped in the middle of a word. All the company who had been
pressing around us halted still. I knew that behind me some one had
entered the room.

M. de Brie dragged me back from where we were blocking the passage. I
turned in his grasp to face the newcomer.

He was a tall, stout man, deep-chested, thick-necked, heavy-jowled. His
wavy hair, brushed up from a high forehead, was lightest brown, while
his brows, mustachios, and beard were dark. His eyes were dark also, his
full lips red and smiling. He had the beauty and presence of all the
Guises; it needed not the star on his breast to tell me that this was
Mayenne himself.

He advanced into the room returning the salutes of the company, but his
glance travelling straight to me and my captor.

"What have we here, Francois?"

"This is a fellow of Etienne de Mar's, M. le Duc," Brie answered. "He
came here with messages for Mlle. de Montluc. I am getting out of him
what