ue was excessive for the loss of her child, and the
efforts she made and the money she spent in the hope of finding some
trace of her daughter were as useless as they were unavailing. It was
also certain that on or about the time of the late duke's death a certain
captain of Light-Horse, whose name some believed to be Henri de
Lagardere, had fled in hot haste from Paris to save his audacious head
from the outraged justice of the king for fighting a duel with a certain
truculent Baron de Brissac and incontinently killing his man.

What connection there might be between these two events those that busied
themselves in the matter left to the imagination and intelligence of
their hearers, but after awhile few continued to busy themselves in the
matter at all. Nevers was dead and forgotten. The fact that Nevers's
daughter had been stolen was soon forgotten likewise by all save the man
and the woman whom it most immediately concerned. Few troubled themselves
to remember that the Princess de Gonzague had been for a brief season the
Duchess de Nevers, and if Louis de Gonzague, whenever the tragic episode
was spoken of, expressed the deepest regret for his lost heart's brother
and the fiercest desire for vengeance upon his murderer or murderers,
the occasions on which the tragic episode was referred to grew less year
by year. Louis de Gonzague flourished; Louis de Gonzague lived in Paris
in great state; Louis de Gonzague was the intimate, almost the bosom
friend, of the king; for Louis of Bourbon, having lost one of the two
Louis whom he loved, seemed to have a double portion of affection to
bestow upon the survivor. If Louis de Gonzague did not himself forget any
of the events connected with a certain night in the moat of Caylus; if he
kept emissaries employed in researches in Spain, emissaries whose numbers
dwindled dismally and mysteriously enough in the course of those
researches, he spoke of his recollections to no one, save perhaps
occasionally to that distinguished individual, Monsieur Peyrolles, who
shared his master's confidences as he shared his master's rise in
fortunes. For Monsieur Peyrolles knew as well as his master all about
that night at Caylus seventeen years before, and could, if he chose--but
he never did choose--have told exactly how the Duke de Nevers came to his
death, and how the child of Nevers disappeared, and how it was that the
battered survivors of a little army of bravos had been overawed by the
musk