-"

"You little fool!" he exclaimed. "This was not Lucas. Had you waited
long enough to hear your name called, I had told you. This is no errand
of Lucas but a very different matter."

He sat a moment, thinking, still with that glitter of excitement in his
eyes. The next instant he threw off the bedclothes and started to rise.

"Get my clothes, Felix. I must go to the Hotel de Lorraine."

But I flung myself upon him, pushing him back into bed and dragging the
cover over him by main force.

"You can go nowhere, M. Etienne; it is madness. The surgeon said you
must lie here for three days. You will get a fever in your wounds; you
shall not go."

"Get off me, 'od rot you; you're smothering me," he gasped. Cautiously I
relaxed my grip, still holding him down. He appealed: "Felix, I must go.
So long as there is a spark of life left in me, I have no choice but to
go."

"Monsieur, you said you were done with the Leaguers--with M. de
Mayenne."

"Aye, so I did," he cried. "But this--but this is Lorance."

Then, at my look of mystification, he suddenly opened his hand and
tossed me the letter he had held close in his palm.

I read:

_M. de Mar appears to consider himself of very little consequence,
or of very great, since he is absent a whole month from the Hotel
de Lorraine. Does he think he is not missed? Or is he so sure of
his standing that he fears no supplanting? In either case he is
wrong. He is missed but he will not be missed forever. He may, if
he will, be forgiven; or he may, if he will, be forgotten. If he
would escape oblivion, let him come to-night, at the eleventh hour,
to lay his apologies at the feet of_

LORANCE DE MONTLUC.

"And she--"

"Is cousin and ward to the Duke of Mayenne. Yes, and my heart's desire."

"Monsieur--"

"Aye, you begin to see it now," he cried vehemently. "You see why I have
stuck to Paris these three years, why I could not follow my father into
exile. It was more than a handful of pistoles caused the breach with
Monsieur; more than a quarrel over Gervais de Grammont. That was the
spark kindled the powder, but the train was laid."

"Then you, monsieur, were a Leaguer?"

"Nay, I was not!" he cried. "To my credit,--or my shame, as you
choose,--I was not. I was neither one nor the other, neither fish nor
flesh. My father thought me a Leaguer, but I was not. I was not
disloyal, in deed at least, to the house that bore me. Monsie