Monsieur began to laugh.
"That is what I should like to know. For, by St. Quentin, I can make nothing of it."
"Monsieur," insisted Lucas, "whatever he was once, I believe him a trickster now."
Monsieur bent his keen eyes on me.
"No; he is plainly in earnest. Therefore with patience I look to get some sense out of this snarl of a story. Something is there we have not yet fathomed."
"Will Monsieur let me speak?"
"I have done naught but urge you to do so for some time past," he answered dryly.
"Monsieur, you know my father would not let me leave St. Quentin with you, three months back. But at length he said I should come, and I reached Paris last night and, since it was late, lodged at an inn. This morning I came to your gate, but the guard would not let me enter. I was so mad to see you, Monsieur, that when you drove out I sprang up on your coach-step—"
"Ah," said Monsieur, a new light breaking in upon him, "that was you, Félix? I did not know you; I was thinking of other matters. And Lucas took you for a miscreant. Now I am sorry."
If I had been a noble he could not have spoken franker apology. But at once he was stern again. "And because my secretary took you in all good faith for a possible assassin and struck you to save me, you turn traitor and take part in a plot to set on him and kill him! I had believed that of some hired lackey, not of a Broux."