first,
then, as she gathered confidence in her subject, with a greater fervour.
But he interrupted her ere she had gone far, "Mademoiselle de La
Vauvraye," said he, "you overstate the matter." His tone was chilling
almost; and she felt as she had been rebuked. "I am no more than the
emissary of Her Majesty--it is to her that your thanks are due."

"Ah, but, monsieur," she returned to the assault, "I owe some thanks
to you as well. What other in your place would have done what you have
done?"

"I know not that, nor do I greatly care," said he, and laughed, but
with a laugh that jarred on her. "That which I did I must have done, no
matter whom it was a question of saving. I am but an instrument in this
matter, mademoiselle."

His thought was to do no more than belittle the service he had rendered
her, to stem her flow of gratitude, since, indeed, he felt, as he said,
that it was to the Queen-Regent her thanks were due. All unwitting was
it--out of his ignorance of the ways of thought of a sex with which he
held the view that it is an ill thing to meddle--that he wounded her by
his disclaimer, in which her sensitive maiden fancy imagined a something
that was almost contemptuous.

They rode in silence for a little spell, broken at last by Garnache in
expression of the thoughts that had come to him as a consequence of what
she had said.

"On this same subject of thanks," said he--and as she raised her eyes
again she found him smiling almost tenderly--"if any are due between us
they are surely due from me to you."

"From you to me?" she asked in wonder.

"Assuredly," said he. "Had you not come between me and the Dowager's
assassins there had been an end to me in the hall of Condillac."

Her hazel eyes were very round for a moment, then they narrowed, and
little humorous lines formed at the corners of her lips.

"Monsieur de Garnache," said she, with a mock coldness that was a faint
echo of his own recent manner, "you overstate the case. That which I did
I must have done, no matter whom it was a question of saving. I was but
an instrument in this matter, monsieur."

His brows went up. He stared at her a moment, gathering instruction from
the shy mockery of her glance. Then he laughed with genuine amusement.

"True," he said. "An instrument you were; but an instrument of Heaven,
whereas in me you but behold the instrument of an earthly power. We are
not quite quits, you see."

But she felt, at least, that she was