addler's wife who lets them.
I left a staunch man in charge--I have no doubt of him."

"You answer for her safety?" Mayenne cried huskily; his breath coming
short. He was flushed, the veins in his forehead corded.

"When she came last night, it happened that the king was there,"
Monsieur went on. "Her loveliness and her misery moved him to the
heart."

"Thousand thunders of heaven! You, with your son, shall be hostages for
her safe return."

"The king," Monsieur went on, as immovably as Mayenne himself at his
best, "with that warm heart of his pitying beauty in distress, is eager
for mademoiselle's marriage with her lover Mar. But he did not favour my
venture here; he called it a silly business. He said you would clap me
in jail, and he told me flat I might rot my life out there before he
would give up to you Mlle. de Montluc."

"Well, then, pardieu, we'll try if he means it!"

"He gave me to understand that he meant it. The St. Quentins out of the
way, there is Valere, stout Kingsman, to succeed. The king loses
little."

"Then are you gone mad that you put yourself in my grasp?"

"I was never saner. I come, my friend, to make you listen to sanity."

I had waited from moment to moment Mayenne's summons to his soldiers.
But he had not rung, and now he flung himself down again in his
arm-chair.

"What, to your understanding, is sanity?"

"If you send me to join my son, monsieur, you leave mademoiselle without
a protector, friendless, penniless, in the midst of a hostile army
cursing the name of Mayenne. Have you reared her delicately, tenderly,
for that?"

Mayenne sat silent, his face a mask. It was impossible to tell whether
the shot hit. Monsieur went on:

"You can of course hold us in durance, torture us, kill us; but you must
answer for it to the people of Paris."

Still was Mayenne silent, drumming on the edge of the table. Finally he
said roughly, as if the words were dragged from him against his will:

"I shall not torture you. I never meant to torture Mar. The arrest was
not my work. Since it was done, I meant to profit by it to keep him
awhile out of my way--only that. I threatened my cousin otherwise in
heat of passion. But I shall not torture him. I shall not kill him."

"Monsieur--"

"I put a card in your hand," Mayenne said curtly. His pride ill brooked
to concede the point, but he could not have it supposed that he did not
see what he was doing. "I give you a card. Do what you can with