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 Félix 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?"

 Prev. P 27/285 next