you will not take
me back again? I admit I have tried to ruin the Comte de Mar. Is that
any marvel, since he is my rival with you? Last March, when I was hiding
here and watched from my window the gay M. de Mar come airily in, day
after day, to see and make love to you, was it any marvel that I swore
to bring his proud head to the dust?"

Now she turned to him and met his gaze squarely.

"The means you employed was the marvel," she said. "If you did not
approve of his visits, you had only to tell him so. He had been ready to
defend to you his right to make them. But you never showed him your
face; of course, had you, you could not have become his father's
housemate and Judas. Oh, I blush to know that the same blood runs in
your veins and mine!"

"You speak hard words, mademoiselle," Lucas returned, keeping his temper
with a stern effort. "You forget that we live in France in war-time, and
not in the kingdom of heaven. I was toiling for more than my own
revenges. I was working at your cousin Mayenne's commands, to aid our
holy cause, for the preservation of the Catholic Church and the Catholic
kingdom of France."

"Your conversion is sudden, then; only an hour ago you were working for
nothing and no one but Paul de Lorraine."

"Come, come, Lorance," Mayenne interposed, his caution setting him ever
on the side of compromise. "Paul is no worse than the rest of us. He
hates his enemies, and so do we all; he works against them to the best
of his power, and so do we all. They are Kingsmen, we are Leaguers; they
fight for their side, and we fight for ours. If we plot against them,
they plot against us; we murder lest we be murdered. We cannot scruple
over our means. Nom de dieu, mademoiselle, what do you expect? Civil war
is not a dancing-school."

"Mademoiselle is right," Lucas said humbly, refusing any defence. "We
have been using cowardly means, weapons unworthy of Christian gentlemen.
And I, at least, cannot plead M. le Duc's excuse that I was blinded in
my zeal for the Cause. For I know and you know there is but one cause
with me. I went to kill St. Quentin because I was promised you for it,
as I would have gone to kill the Pope himself. This is my excuse; I did
it to win you. There is no crime in God's calendar I would not commit
for that."

He had possessed himself of her hand and was bending over her, burning
her with his hot eyes. Mass of lies as the man was, in this last
sentence I knew he spoke the truth.