"You are a plague spot, a fester in this house," answered Rénèe. "You seduce the Prince's people with lies and foolishness, you bring those here who have no right to enter these doors."
"The Princess wishes me to stay—go to her with these complaints, and hear her answer," cried Duprès, with a sudden snarl.
His words woke Rénèe's lurking anger; she flashed from coldness to heat.
"The Prince maintains you, shelters you, saved you—not his wife—and your gratitude is to pander to her foolishness and drain her of her very jewels by your tricks. And there is worse than that, Duprès, she meets here those whom she should not meet, she degrades herself by consorting with idlers in a charlatan's company. You know this—again I tell you, as a warning, you must go."
"Who gave you authority to talk so boldly?" exclaimed the alchemist in a rage. "If my honoured lady deigns to come here to watch my poor experiments, what is it to you?"
"I will not argue on this theme," returned Rénèe. "But if you are not gone within the week it shall be put before His Highness that you bring disgrace and disorder into his house."
A curious expression of dislike, rage, and half-amusement gleamed in the alchemist's narrowed eyes, but Rénèe, already hot, agitated, and half-ashamed of her own errand, her own plain speaking, was turning quickly and resolutely away, when a sudden sound caused her to stop and turn violently towards Duprès.
It was a woman's laugh she heard—a high, shrill, long laugh; it came from the alchemist's inner room, and was unmistakably the laugh of Anne of Orange.
In a flash Rénèe remembered the private door from the Princess's apartments which Anne had affected to have locked and hidden under the tapestries, in a flash she recalled the hours Anne had been seemingly enclosed in her chamber—now it was all clear enough.
"So she comes thus," said Rénèe, with tears in her eyes, "and you have been the go-between!"