"Why, of course, mademoiselle. Was it not a trap for him?"
She caught her breath as if in pain.
"I knew that as soon as I saw that my cousin Mayenne was not angry. When I told what I had done and he smiled at me and said I should have my gloves, why, then I thought my heart would stop beating. I saw what I had accomplished—mon dieu, I was sick with repentance of it!"
I had to tell her I had not thought it.
"No," she answered; "I had got you into this by my foolishness; I must needs try to get you out by my wits. Brie, the one who took you by the throat—there has been bad blood between him and your lord this twelvemonth; only last May M. le Comte ran him through the wrist. Had I interfered for you," she said, colouring a little, "M. de Brie would have inferred interest in the master from that in the man, and he had seen to your beating himself."
It suddenly dawned on me that this M. de Brie was the "little cheese" of guard-room gossip. And I thought that the gentleman would hardly display so much venom against M. Étienne unless he were a serious obstacle to his hopes. Nor would mademoiselle be here at midnight, weeping over a serving-lad, if she cared nothing for the master. If she had not worn her heart on her sleeve before the laughing salon, mayhap she would show it to me.
"Mademoiselle," I cried, "when the billet was brought him M. Étienne rose from his bed at once to come. But he was faint from fatigue and loss of blood; he could not walk across the room. But he bade me try to make mademoiselle believe his absence was no fault of his. He wrote her a month ago; he found to-day the letter was never delivered."
"Is he hurt dangerously?"
"No," I admitted reluctantly; "no, I think not. He was wounded in the right forearm, and again pinked in the shoulder; but he will recover."
"You said," she went on, the tears standing in her eyes, "that he was penniless. I have not much, but what I have is freely his."