Lagardere answered him, slowly: "Madame de Nevers gave this little lady to me just now from yonder window, taking me for you. There is a plot to kill the child, to kill you."
Nevers gave a groan. "This is the hate of the Marquis de Caylus."
"I don’t know who is doing the job," Lagardere answered, "but what I do know is that the night is alive with assassins. I think I have got rid of some of them, but there may be others, wherefore prudence advises us to be off."
He could see Nevers stiffen himself in the darkness as he answered, proudly: "A Nevers fly?"
Lagardere shrugged his shoulders. "Even I have no passion for flight, but with a sweet young lady to defend—"
Nevers seemed to accept his correction. "You are right. Forgive me. Let us go."
The two men turned to leave the moat, but as they did so they were stopped by the sound of fresh footsteps on the bridge, and in another instant Nevers’s page had descended the steps and ran to join them.
"My lord!" he cried to the duke as soon as he reached the pair—"my lord, my lord, you are surrounded!"
Nevers gave an angry cry: "Too late!"
Lagardere answered him with a laugh. "Nonsense! There are but nine rascals."