“’Tis but argument that my brother is a person not without note.”

“But granted.  ‘We have seen his carriage at your curb,’ they say.  I insist that it is a mistake.  ’But we saw him come from your door at such and such an hour.’  If he came, ’twas but for meeting such answer as I have always given him.  Will they never believe—­will your brother himself never believe that, though did he have, as he himself says, all France in the hollow of his hand, he could be nothing to me?  Now I will make an end to this.  I will leave Paris.”

“Madam, you might not be allowed to go.”

“What!  I not allowed to go!  And what would hinder a Knollys of Banbury from going when the hour shall arrive?”

“The regent.”

“And why the regent?”

“Because of my brother.”

“Your brother!”

“Assuredly.  My brother is to-day king of Paris.  If he liked he could keep you prisoner in Paris.  My brother does as he chooses.  He could abolish Parliament to-morrow if he chose.  My brother can do all things—­except to win from you, Lady Catharine, one word of kindness, of respect.  Now, then, he has come to the end.  He told me to come to you and bear his word.  He told me to say to you that this is the last time he will importune, the last time that he will implore.  Oh, Lady Catharine!  Once before I carried to you a message from John Law—­from John Law, not in distress then more than he is now, even in this hour of his success.”

Lady Catharine paled as she sank back into her seat.  Her white hand caught at the lace at her throat.  Her eyes grew dark in their emotion.

“Yes, Madam,” went on Will Law, tears shining in his own eyes, “’twas I, an unfaithful messenger, who, by an error, wrought ruin for my brother and for yourself, even as I did for myself.  Madam, hear me!  I would be a better messenger to-day.”

Lady Catharine sat still silent, her bosom heaving, her eyes gone wide and straining.

“I have seen my brother weep,” said Will, going on impulsively.  “I have seen him walk the floor at night, have heard him cry out to himself.  They call him crazed.  Indeed he is crazed.  Yet ’tis but for one word from you.”

“Sir,” said Lady Catharine, struggling to gain self-control, and in spite of herself softened by this appeal, “you speak well.”

“If I do, ’tis but because I am the mouth-piece of a man who all his life has sought to speak the truth; who has sought—­yes, I say to you even now, Lady Catharine—­who has sought always to live the truth.  This I say in spite of all that we both know.”

There came no reply from the woman, who sat still looking at him, not yet moved by the voice of the proxy as she might then have been by the voice of that proxy’s principal.  Vehemently the young man, ordinarily so timid and diffident, approached her.