t you must needs spoil all by flaring out with
impudent speech."

"I crave mademoiselle's pardon. I was wrong and insolent. But she played
too well."

"And if it was not play?" she cried, rising. "If I do--well, I will not
say despise him--but care nothing for him? Will he then go to St. Denis?
Then tell him from me that he has my pity as one cruelly cozened, and my
esteem as a one-time servant of mine, but never my love. Tell him I
would willingly save him alive, for the sake of the love he once bore
me. But as for any answering love in my bosom, I have not one spark.
Tell him to go find a new mistress at St. Denis. He might as well cry
for the moon as seek to win Lorance de Montluc."

"That may be true," I said; "but all the same he will try. Can
mademoiselle suppose he will go out of Paris now, and leave her to marry
Brie and Lorraine?"

"Only one," she protested with the shadow of a smile; and then a sudden
rush of tears blinded her. "I am a very miserable girl," she said
woefully, "for I bring nothing but danger to those that love me."

I dropped on my knees before her and kissed the hem of her dress.

"Ah, Felix," she said, "if you really pitied me, you would get him out
of Paris!" And she fell to weeping as if her heart would break.

I had no skill to comfort her. I bent my head before her, silent. At
length she sobbed out:

"It boots little for us to quarrel over what you shall say to M. de Mar,
when we know not that you will ever speak to him again. And it was all
my fault."

"Mademoiselle, it was the fault of my hasty tongue."

But she shook her head.

"I maintained that to you, but it was not true. Mayenne had something in
his mind before. A general holds his schemes so dear and lives so cheap.
But I will do my utmost, Felix, lad. It is not long to daylight now. I
will go to Francois de Brie and we'll believe I shall prevail."

She took up her candle and said good night to me very gently and
quietly, and gave me her hand to kiss. She opened the door,--with my
fettered wrists I could not do the office for her,--and on the threshold
turned to smile on me, wistfully, hopefully. In the next second, with a
gasp that was half a cry, she blew out the light and pushed the door
shut again.

XV

_My Lord Mayenne._

I knew she was shutting the door by the click of the latch; in the next
second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of it.
"What--" I was beginning, when she laid he