Aloyse understood, and yet she hung her head, and made no reply.
"Is there no news from the court, then!" the viscount asked at length, as if not content with the answer implied by her silence.
"Nothing, Monseigneur," replied the nurse.
"Oh, I expected as much! If anything had occurred, good or bad, you would not have failed to tell me at the first kiss. Do you know nothing!"
"Alas! no."
"I see how it is," rejoined the young man, bitterly. "I was a prisoner,—dead perhaps! One does not pay his indebtedness to a prisoner, much less to a dead man. But I am here now, alive and free, and there must be a reckoning with me: whether willingly or by force, it must and shall be!"
"Oh, be careful, Monseigneur!" cried Aloyse.
"Have no fear, nurse. Is Monsieur l'Amiral at Paris!"
"Yes, Monseigneur. He has called and sent here ten times to learn if you had returned."
"Good! And Monsieur de Guise?"