"By Heaven, it shall not!" Mayenne shouted. "Beware how much further you dare anger me, you Satan's cub!"
He was fingering the dagger again as if he longed to plunge it into Lucas's gullet, and I rather marvelled that he did not, or summon his guard to do it. For I could well understand how infuriating was Lucas. He carried himself with an air of easy equality insufferable to the first noble in the land. Mayenne's chosen rôle was the unmoved, the inscrutable, but Lucas beat him at his own game and drove him out into the open of passion and violence. It was a miracle to me that the man lived—unless, indeed, he were a prince in disguise.
"Satan's cub!" Lucas repeated, laughing. "Our late king had called me that, pardieu! But I knew not you acknowledged Satan in the family."
"I ordered Antoine to wake me if you returned in the night," Mayenne went on gruffly. "When I heard you had been here I knew something was wrong—unless the thing were done."
"It is not done. The whole plot is ruined."
"Nom de dieu! If it is by your bungling—"
"It was not by my bungling," Lucas answered with the first touch of heat he had shown. "It was fate—and that fool Grammont."
"Explain then, and quickly, or it will be the worse for you."
Lucas sat down, the table between them.
"Look here," he said abruptly, leaning forward over the board. "Have you Mar's boy?"