"Where Hugues flung you into the horse-trough last month for speaking disrespectfully of the Dauphin?"
"Mademoiselle, you must not interrupt; later you can question Saxe if you wish."
"I wished to show you what good friends they were, these two. Hugues cannot speak for himself."
"He had need of me," said Saxe sullenly, "and that was the reason he came to me as I say. I was grooming Grey Roland. 'He saved a King for France,' said Hugues, with his hand on his neck, 'and what a King he will make, so grateful, so generous. Not a man who helps him will be forgotten. And it won't be long now. Saxe,' he said, 'you should join us while there is time.' 'Who are us?' said I. But he wouldn't answer that. 'You could hang us all if you knew,' he said. So I told him that unless I had at least one name I wouldn't listen to him. What was he but a servant? So he stood rubbing his chin awhile, then he said, 'We need you, Saxe, for you have the horses we want and you know Valmy, so I'll tell you who is the brain of it all and the keenest next to the Dauphin himself—Mademoiselle de Vesc.'"
"A lie," said La Mothe, "the damnedest lie that ever came out of hell.
Finish your lies, Saxe."
Sternly Commines turned upon him. "You are here only on sufferance; either leave the room or be silent."
"Monsieur d'Argenton, it is every man's right——" began La Mothe; but
Ursula de Vesc, turning in her chair, laid a hand upon his arm.
"Wait," she said, smiling up at him bravely; "but I am grateful to you all the same. So I am the brain of it all, Saxe?"
"I only know what Hugues told me," answered Saxe, looking straight before him. Of the two he was the more disturbed. His scalp tingled, and again the little points of perspiration were glistening on his forehead. Her quietness frightened him. To have shouted down a passion of protest, a passion of terrified, angry denial, would have been more natural. "He said you sent him on both days, you and Monseigneur. You were both afraid the King would suspect the truth——"
"The truth!" repeated the girl, and for the first time her voice shook; "but it is all a lie, as Monsieur La Mothe says, a clumsy lie, and yet I see that it may serve its purpose. It is not the truth the King requires. Monsieur d'Argenton, I tell you formally that what Saxe has said is absolutely untrue."