"Only if you come with me. Lorance, it is such a little way! Only to meet me in the next square. We will slip out of the gates together—leave Paris and all its plots and murders, and at St. Denis keep our honeymoon."
"Monsieur," she said slowly, "I am told that my cousin Mayenne offered a month ago to give me to you for your name on the roster of the League. Is that true?"
"It is true. But you cannot think, Lorance, it was for any lack of love for you. I swear to you—"
"Nay, you need not. I have it by heart that you love me."
"Lorance!"
"But when you could not take me with honour you would not take me. Your house stands against us; you would not desert your house. Am I then to be false to mine?"
"A woman belongs to her husband's house."
"Aye, but she does not wed the enemy of her own. Monsieur, you are full of loyalty; shall I have none? I was born, my father before me, in the shadow of the house of Lorraine; the Lorraine princes our kinsmen, our masters, our friends. When I was orphaned young, and penniless because King Henry's Huguenots had wrenched our lands away, I came here to my cousin Mayenne, to dwell here in kindness and love as a daughter of the house. Am I to turn traitor now?"
"Lorance," he was fiercely beginning, when Mlle. de Tavanne bounded in.
"On guard!" she hissed at us. "They come!"