"Sir," she said to Commendone, "if this be my last hour, then so mote it be, but I swear that I knew nothing. I was told at high noon yesterday that a girl was to be sent here, that Sir John and the valet of His Highness would bring her. I knew, and know nothing of who she is. I did but do as I have always done in my trade. And, messieurs, it was the King's command. Now ye have come, and there is the lady unharmed, please God."
"Please God!" Johnnie said brutally. "You hag of hell, who are you to use that name?"
The fat, artificially whitened hands, with their glittering rings fell upon the table with a dull thud.
"Who am I, indeed?" she said. "You may well ask that, but I tell you others of my women received this lady. I have not seen her until now."
"Indeed she hath not," came in a low, startled voice from Elizabeth.
"Sir," La Motte went on, "I see now that this is the end of my sinful life. Kill me an ye wish, I care not, for I am dead already, and so also are you, and the young mistress there, and your man too."
"What mean you?" Johnnie said.
"What mean I? Why, upstairs lieth the King, bound. We all have two or three miserable hours, and then we shall be found, and what we shall endure will pass the bitterness of death before death comes. That, messieurs, you know very well.
"So what matters it," she continued, her extraordinary vitality overcoming everything, her voice growing stronger each moment, "what matters it! Let us drink wine one to the other, to death! in this house of death, in this house to which worse than death cometh apace."
She reached out for the flagon of wine before her with a cackle of laughter.