“Was the quarrel of your seeking?”
“In a measure it was, Mademoiselle.”
“In a measure!” she echoed. Then persisting, as women will—“Will you not tell me what this measure was?”
“Tenez, Mademoiselle,” I answered in despair; “I will tell you just so much as I may. Your brother had occasion to be opposed to certain projects that were being formed in Paris by persons high in power around a beardless boy. Himself of too small importance to dare wage war against those powerful ones who would have crushed him, your brother sought to gain his ends by sending a challenge to this boy. The lad was high-spirited and consented to meet M. de Canaples, by whom he would assuredly have been murdered—'t is the only word, Mademoiselle—had I not intervened as I did.”
She was silent for a moment. Then—“I believe you, Monsieur,” she said simply. “You fought, then, to shield another—but why?”
“For three reasons, Mademoiselle. Firstly, those persons high in power chose to think it my fault that the quarrel had arisen, and threatened to hang me if the duel took place and the boy were harmed. Secondly, I myself felt a kindness for the boy. Thirdly, because, whatever sins Heaven may record against me, it has at least ever been my way to side against men who, confident of their superiority, seek, with the cowardly courage of the strong, to harm the weak. It is, Mademoiselle, the courage of the man who knows no fear when he strikes a woman, yet who will shake with a palsy when another man but threatens him.”
“Why did you not tell me all this before?” she whispered, after a pause. And methought I caught a quaver in her voice.
I laughed for answer, and she read my laugh aright; presently she pursued her questions and asked me the name of the boy I had defended. But I evaded her, telling her that she must need no further details to believe me.
“It is not that, Monsieur! I do believe you; I do indeed, but—”
“Hark, Mademoiselle!” I cried suddenly, as the clatter of many hoofs sounded near at hand. “What is that?”