“I never thought it great matter whom one married,” Mayenne said slowly:  “one boy is much like another.  I should have mated her as befitted her station—­I thought she would be happy enough.  And she was good about it:  I did not see how deep she cared.  She was docile till I drove her too hard.  She’s a loving child.  You are fortunate in your daughter, St. Quentin.”

Monsieur sprang up radiant, advancing on him open-armed.  Mayenne added, with his cool smile: 

“You need not flatter yourself, Monsieur, that it is your doing.  I laugh at your threats.  ’Twere sport to me to clap you behind bars, to say to your king, to the mob you brag of, ‘Come, now, get him out.’”

“Then,” cried Monsieur, “I must value my sweet daughter more than ever.”

He was standing over Mayenne with outstretched hand, but the chief delayed taking it.

“Not quite so fast, my friend.  If I yield up the Duc de St. Quentin, the Comte de Mar, and Mlle. Lorance de Montluc, I demand certain little concessions for myself.”

“By all means, monsieur.  You stamp us churls else.”

My duke sat again, his smile a shade uneasy.  Which Mayenne perceived with quiet enjoyment, as he went on blandly:  “Nothing that I could ask of you, M. de St. Quentin, could equal, could halve, what I give.  Still, that the knightliness may not be, to your mortification, all on one side, I have thought of something for you to grant.”

“Name it, monsieur.”

“Another point in your favour I had forgot,” Mayenne observed, with his usual reluctance to show his cards even when the time had come to spread them.  “Last night I laid on this table a packet, just arrived, which I was told belonged to you.  When I had time to think of it again, it had vanished.  I accused my lackeys, but later it occurred to me that Mlle. de Montluc, arming for battle, had purloined it.”

“Your shrewdness does you credit.”

“You see you have scored a fourth point, though again by no prowess of your own.  Therefore am I emboldened to demand what I want.”

“Even to half my fortune—­”

“No, not your gear.  Save that for your Bearnais’s itching palm.”

“Then what the devil is it you want?  You will not get my name in the League.”

“I am glad my nephew Paul bungled that affair of his,” Mayenne went on at his own pace.  “It might have been a blunder to kill you; it had certainly been a pity.  Though we Lorraines have two murders to avenge, I have changed my mind about beginning with yours.”

“You are wise, monsieur.  I am, after all, a harmless creature.”

Mayenne laughed.

“Natheless have you done your best here in Paris to undermine me.  Did I let you carry on your little works unhindered, they might in time annoy me.  Therefore I request that so long as I stay in Paris you stay out.”

“Oh, I don’t like that!”