eting him with his keen eyes, went on:

"Do not mistake me, monsieur uncle. I think you in bad case, but I am
ready to sink or swim with you. So long as the hand of Lorance is in
your bestowing I am your faithful servant. I have not hesitated to risk
the gallows to serve you. Last March I made my way here, disguised, to
tell you of the king's coming change of faith and of St. Quentin's
certain defection. I demanded then my price, my marriage with
mademoiselle. But you put me off again. You sent me back to Mantes to
kill you St. Quentin."

"Aye. And you have been about it these four months, and you have not
killed him."

Lucas reddened with ire.

"I am no Jacques Clement to stab and be massacred. You cannot buy such a
service of me, M. de Mayenne. If I do bravo's work for you I choose my
own time and way. I brought the duke to Paris, delivered him up to you
to deal with as it liked you. But you with your army at your back were
afraid to kill him. You flinched and waited. You dared not shoulder the
onus of his death. Then I, to help you out of your strait, planned to
make his own son's the hand that should do the deed; to kill the duke
and ruin his heir; to put not only St. Quentin but Mar out of your
way--"

"Let us be accurate, Paul," Mayenne said. "Mar was not in my way; he was
of no consequence to me. You mean, put him out of your way."

"He was in your way, too. Since he would not join the Cause he was a
hindrance to it. You had as much to gain as I by his ruin."

"Something--not as much. I did not want him killed--I preferred him to
Valere."

"Nor did I want him killed; so our views jibed well."

"Why not, then? Did you prefer him as your wife's lover to some other
who might appear?"

"I do not intend that my wife shall have lovers," Lucas answered.

Mayenne broke into laughter.

"Nom d'un chien, where will you keep her? In the Bastille? Lorance and
no lovers! Ho, ho!"

"I mean none whom she favours."

"Then why do you leave Mar alive? She adores the fellow," Mayenne said.
I had no idea whether he really thought it or only said it to annoy
Lucas. At any rate it had its effect. Lucas's brows were knotted; he
spoke with an effort, like a man under stress of physical pain.

"I know she loves him now, and she would love him dead; but she would
not love him a parricide."

"Is that your creed? Pardieu! you don't know women. The blacker the
villain the more they adore him."

"I know it is true, monsi