She was quick to see the slip, and pressed home a thrust at once.
“On your honour?”
“Pascal, on my honour; Tourelle, during my service with my master.”
She smiled, partly at the evasion, but more at his manner of making it.
“If you were not in this service of which you speak so readily, how would you have finished that sentence? Pascal de—what?”
“That is my unhappy secret, mademoiselle; I beg your consideration,” and his tone suggested a melancholy trouble.
But Lucette smiled.
“Had you been a servant truly, your honour would not have stayed you from deceiving me. If I do not go now to mademoiselle, will you tell me all you know of this M. de Cobalt?”
“I will tell you this, on my honour, and your honour will prevent your asking more,” he answered after a moment’s consideration. “A braver soldier, a more honourable knight, a more gallant gentleman, never trod this earth than he in whose service you now find me.”
She looked at him searchingly, and believed him. But this very belief only sufficed to perplex her the more after Denys’ story.