"I deserved, Monsieur," she continued presently, "that you should have left me to my fate for all the odious things I uttered when you warned me of my peril,--for the manner in which I have treated you since your coming to Blois."
"You have but treated me, Mademoiselle, in the only manner in which you could treat one so far beneath you, one who is utterly unworthy that you should bestow a single regret upon him."
"You are strangely humble to-night, Monsieur. It is unwonted in you, and for once you wrong yourself. You have not said that I am forgiven."
"I have naught to forgive."
"Hélas! you have--indeed you have!"
"Eh, bien!" quoth I, with a return of my old tone of banter, "I forgive then."
Thereafter we travelled on in silence for some little while, my heart full of joy at being so near to her, and the friendliness which she evinced for me, and my mind casting o'er my joyous heart a cloud of some indefinable evil presage.
"You are a brave man, M. de Luynes," she murmured presently, "and I have been taught that brave men are ever honourable and true."
"Had they who taught you that known Gaston de Luynes, they would have told you instead that it is possible for a vile man to have the one redeeming virtue of courage, even as it is possible for a liar to have a countenance that is sweet and innocent."
"There speaks that humble mood you are affecting, and which sits upon you as my father's clothes might do. Nay, Monsieur, I shall believe in my first teaching, and be deaf to yours."
Again there was a spell of silence. At last--"I have been thinking, Monsieur," she said, "of that other occasion on which you rode with me. I remember that you said you had killed a man, and when I asked you why, you said that you had done it because he sought to kill you. Was that the truth?"
"Assuredly, Mademoiselle. We fought a duel, and it is customary in a duel for each to seek to kill the other."
"But why was this duel fought?" she cried, with some petulance.
"I fear me, Mademoiselle, that I may not answer you," I said, recalling the exact motives, and thinking how futile appeared the quarrel which Eugène de Canaples had sought with Andrea when viewed in the light of what had since befallen.
"Was the quarrel of your seeking?"
"In a measure it was, Mademoiselle."
"In a measure!" she echoed. Then persisting, as women will--"Will you not tell me what this measure was?"