ountess had continued her story, which she
prosecuted, though very briefly, from the time she left the territories
of Burgundy, in company with her aunt, until the storming of Schonwaldt,
and her final surrender to the Count of Crevecoeur. All remained mute
after she had finished her brief and broken narrative, and the Duke of
Burgundy bent his fierce dark eyes on the ground, like one who seeks for
a pretext to indulge his passion, but finds none sufficiently plausible
to justify himself in his own eyes.

"The mole," he said at length, looking upwards, "winds not his dark
subterranean path beneath our feet the less certainly that we, though
conscious of his motions, cannot absolutely trace them. Yet I would know
of King Louis wherefore he maintained these ladies at his Court, had
they not gone thither by his own invitation."

"I did not so entertain them, fair cousin," answered the King. "Out
of compassion, indeed, I received them in privacy, but took an early
opportunity of placing them under the protection of the late excellent
Bishop, your own ally, and who was (may God assoil him!) a better judge
than I, or any secular prince, how to reconcile the protection due
to fugitives with the duty which a king owes to his ally, from whose
dominions they have fled. I boldly ask this young lady whether my
reception of them was cordial, or whether it was not, on the contrary,
such as made them express regret that they had made my Court their place
of refuge?"

"So much was it otherwise than cordial," answered the Countess, "that it
induced me, at least, to doubt how far it was possible that your Majesty
should have actually given the invitation of which we had been assured,
by those who called themselves your agents, since, supposing them to
have proceeded only as they were duly authorized, it would have been
hard to reconcile your Majesty's conduct with that to be expected from a
king, a knight, and a gentleman."

The Countess turned her eyes to the King as she spoke, with a look which
was probably intended as a reproach, but the breast of Louis was armed
against all such artillery. On the contrary, waving slowly his expanded
hands, and looking around the circle, he seemed to make a triumphant
appeal to all present, upon the testimony borne to his innocence in the
Countess's reply.

Burgundy, meanwhile, cast on him a look which seemed to say, that if in
some degree silenced, he was as far as ever from being satisfied, and