'What secret, Count of Pappenheim?' I demanded, keeping my hand still on my sword.
'I am addressing the Prince of Vaudemont,' replied the Count, with exasperating hauteur, 'not you, monsieur.'
'To the point!' said the Prince, stamping his foot.
'I mean that your sister, Mademoiselle Marie Louise of Lorraine, the intended bride of Wolfgang Count of Pappenheim, was most unworthily, most unwisely, and most indelicately, committed by the French king's mistress to this Scotsman's care, to travel with him together for many nights and days, these two hundred miles or so, through Champagne and Lorraine. You understand me now, monseigneur, I presume.'
'Peace, Count; you alone are unwise and ungenerous, to noise it thus abroad, and while in anger, too. The Scot has performed his trust honourably and faithfully, and for one feature in the affair only do I feel shame. That Marie Louise, when suddenly leaving the court of France on our quarrel with Louis, had to take refuge with the Lorrainer d'Amboise; but that woman, though the mistress of the King, is the daughter of an old and faithful adherent of our house, who fell by my father's side at Prague; and more honourable would it have been in Clara d'Ische, and in Mademoiselle my sister, to have trusted their secret to the honour of M. Blane, and made him fully aware that the disguised girl he was conducting to Nanci was the only daughter of Duke Charles IV., and not the soubrette of a licentious Parisienne, of mature age.'
'Do not add that as an additional invective, my dear Prince,' said De Bitche; 'king's mistresses are always dames of mature age—it is an historical fact.'
'They ought fully and amply to have trusted to him,' resumed the Prince, without heeding the Count.
'I would to heaven they had done so!' said I, in a half-stifled voice; 'for then much mental misery had been spared me—I had never raised my eyes or hopes so high.'
'Arthur Blane,' said the Prince, who alone had heard something of this soliloquy, 'thou art a fine fellow, and a brave one, and I love thee better every day—ay, too well to suffer Pappenheim to do thee wrong.'
'I thank you, M. le Prince.'