"I!" exclaimed Mlle. de Montluc; "I weep over his recreancy? It is a far-fetched jest, my Blanche; can you invent no better? The Comte de Mar—behold him!"
She snatched a card from a tossed-down hand, holding it up aloft for us all to see. It was by chance the knave of diamonds; the pictured face with its yellow hair bore, in my fancy at least, a suggestion of M. Étienne.
"Behold M. de Mar—behold his fate!" With a twinkling of her white fingers she had torn the luckless knave into a dozen pieces and sent them whirling over her head to fall far and wide among the company.
"Summary measures, mademoiselle!" quoth a grizzled warrior, with a laugh. "Mordieu! have we your good permission to deal likewise with the flesh-and-blood Mar, when we go to arrest him for conspiring against the Holy League?"
But Mlle. de Tavanne's quick tongue robbed him of his answer.
"Marry, you are severe on him, Lorance. To be sure he does not come himself, but he sends so gallant a messenger!"
Mademoiselle glanced at me with hard blue eyes.
"That is the greatest insult of all," she said. "I could forgive—and forget—his absence; but I do not forgive his despatching me his horse-boy."