emoiselle." There was no shadow of hesitation in the reply,
though the abrupt change of subject was as startling as the question
itself.

"Of course. Music opens all doors. Monsieur La Mothe, I congratulate
you."

"That having been in Valmy I am now in Amboise?"

"Upon better than that. Some day I may tell you."

"But this is the best possible, and I congratulate myself. No! Good
as this is, there is a better than the best! Mademoiselle----"

"But you sing as well as make verses, do you not--you, whose music
opened the gates even of Valmy? Indeed, I heard you just now. You are
another Orpheus, and Valmy a very similar interior. You don't like me
to say so? Very well, my lute is in your hand, and I am waiting. Did
they teach you in Poitou to keep ladies waiting?"

"Poitou?" repeated La Mothe; "but I never said I had been in Poitou."

"Oh! but as a minstrel you wander everywhere, or--what was it?--as a
poor gentleman seeing France, and so to Poitou. Anjou, Guienne,
anywhere would do as well--except Flanders, where Monsieur de Commines
comes from, and where I wish Monsieur de Commines had remained," she
added.

"You dislike Monsieur de Commines? Mademoiselle, if you knew him
better; how I wish you did. There was once a friendless boy--"

"Is this another fairy tale?" Though she interrupted him with so
little ceremony, there was no asperity in the voice. It was as if she
said, "Even good women have their limitations. I may forgive Philip de
Commines, but you cannot expect me to praise him."

"As true a story as the other."

"And you believe in that other?"

"With all my heart."

"Then why does the father not show himself fatherly?"

"Is it not the part of the son to say, 'Father, I have sinned'?"

"I see," she said, some of the old bitterness creeping into her tone,
"the prodigal of twelve years old who is rioting in Amboise--you see
how he riots--should ask forgiveness," and as she spoke Stephen La
Mothe, with a sudden sense of chill, remembered that other prodigal of
twelve years old who was hung on the Valmy gallows that the roads of
France might be safe. If Commines was right, the parallel was
complete--horribly complete. But she gave him no time to dwell upon
the coincidence. "You put a heavy charge upon me," she went on, the
furrows deepening on her forehead. "Would to God I could see what is
best, what is right. I must think. I must think. Play to me,
Monsieur La Mothe, but