is with a rueful smile, his thoughts of a sudden as far
away from me as if I had never set foot in the Rue Coupejarrets. He
shook his head, sighing, and said, with a hand on Gervais's shoulder:
"It's beyond you, cousin."

Gervais brought him back to the point.

"Well, I've done what I could for you. But you don't help me when you
let loose a spy to warn Lucas."

"He shall not go. You know well, cousin, you will be no gladder than I
when that knave is dead. But I will not have Felix Broux suffer because
he dared speak for the Duke of St. Quentin."

"As you choose, then. I will not touch a hair of his head if you keep
him from Lucas."

Once more he turned away across the room. My bewilderment was so great
that the words came out of themselves:

"Messieurs, is it Lucas you mean to kill?"

Yeux-gris looked at me, not instantly replying. I cried again to him:

"Monsieur, is it Lucas or the duke?"

Then Yeux-gris, despite a gesture from Gervais, who would have told me
nothing I might ask, exclaimed:

"Why, Lucas!"

He said it in such honest surprise and with such a steady glance that
the heavy fear that had hung on me dropped from me like a dead-weight,
and suddenly I turned quite dizzy and fell into the nearest chair.

A dash of water in the face made me look up, to see Yeux-gris standing
wet-handed by me.

"Mon dieu!" he cried, "you were as white as the wall. Do you love so
much this Lucas who struck you?"

"No," I said, rising; "I thought you meant to kill the duke."

"Did you take us for Leaguers?"

I nodded.

He spoke as if actually he felt it important to set himself right in my
eyes.

"Well, we are none. We are no politicians, but private gentlemen with a
grudge to pay. I care not what the parties do. Whether we have the
Princess Isabelle or Henry the Huguenot, 'tis all one to me; I am not
putting either on the throne. So if you have got it into your head that
we are plotting for the League, why, get it out again."

"But you are enemies to the Duke of St. Quentin?"

He answered me slowly:

"We do not love him. But we do not plot his death. He goes his way
unharmed by us. We are gentlemen, not bravos."

"And Lucas?"

"Lucas is my cousin's enemy, and, being a great man's man, skulks behind
the bars of the Hotel st. Quentin and will not face my cousin's sword.
So to reach him takes a little plotting. Do you believe me?"

I looked into his gray eyes, that had flashed so hotly in my defence,