way. After a moment she went on:

"Cousin Charles, it is our lot to live in such days of blood and turmoil
that we know not any other way to do but injure and kill. I think you
are more harassed and troubled than any man in France. You have Henry of
Navarre and the Huguenots and half the provinces to fight in the field,
and your own League to combat at home. You must make favour with each of
a dozen quarrelling factions, must strive and strive to placate and
loyalize them all. The leaders work each for his own end, each against
the others and against you; and the truth is not in one of them, and
their pledges are ropes of straw. They intrigue and rebel and betray
till you know not which way to turn, and you curse the day that made you
head of the League."

"I do curse the day Henri was killed," Mayenne said soberly. "And that
is true, Lorance. But I am head of the League, and I must do my all to
lead it to success."

"But not by the path of shame!" she cried quickly. "Success never yet
lay that way. Henri de Valois slew our Henri, and see how God dealt with
him!"

He looked at her fixedly; I think he heeded her words less than her
shining, earnest eyes. And he said at last:

"Well, you shall have your boy, Lorance."

"Ah, monsieur!"

With tears dimming the brightness of those sweet eyes she dropped on her
knees before him, kissing his hand.

Lucas, since his one unlucky outburst, had said never a word but stood
looking on with a ruefulness of visage that it warmed the cockles of my
heart to see.

Certes, he was in no very pleasant corner, this dear M. Paul. His
mistress had heard his own lips describe his plot against the St.
Quentins; there was no possibility of lying himself clear of it. Out of
his own mouth he was convicted of spycraft, treachery, and cowardly
murder. And in the Hotel de Lorraine, as in the Hotel de St. Quentin,
his betrayal had come about through me. I was unwitting agent in both
cases; but that did not make him love me the more. Could eyes slay, I
had fallen of the glance he shot me over mademoiselle's bowed head; but
when she rose he said to her:

"Mademoiselle, the boy is as much my prisoner as M. le Duc's, since I
got him here. But I, too, freely give him up to you."

She swept him a curtsey, silently, without looking at him. He made an
eager pace nearer her.

"Lorance," he cried in a low, rapid voice, "I see I am out of your
graces. Now, by Our Lady, what's life worth to me if