'Well, what else are you?' she retorted.
'A much maligned, overworked prince.'
She laughed, and despite her choler a look of genuine affection crept into her eyes as she met the reproachful glance of the brother whom she loved so dearly, and whose faults she was always ready to condone.
'By the Mass!' quoth he. 'You talk of having worked and slaved for me—and so you have, I'll own—but, far from leading a dissipated life in Paris the while, I toiled and slaved, intrigued and conspired, too—aye, and risked my life a hundred times so that I might fall in with your schemes.'
'Oh!' she broke in with a good-natured laugh. 'Let us be just, Monsieur my brother. You allowed others to toil and slave and intrigue and conspire, and to risk their life in your cause——'
''Tis you are unjust, Margot,' he retorted hotly. 'Why, think you then, that I was arrested by order of my brother the King, and thrown into the dungeon of Vincennes——?'
'You would not have been arrested, my dear,' said Marguerite dryly, 'if you had not chosen to be arrested.'
'The King, our brother, does not approve of your schemes, my Margot.'
'He is the dog in the manger,' she replied. 'Though Flanders and Hainault and the Netherlands are not for him, he does not wish to see you a more powerful prince than he.'
'So, you see——'