"What, M. le Capitain, is there another St. Bartholomew, that people choose my apartments for refuge?"
"This time it is not certain that the fugitive is here," replied Captain de l'Archant, of the bodyguard. "He is known to have been in the palace this morning, and no one answering his description has been seen to leave by any of the gates. It was, indeed, a most sudden and mysterious disappearance; and it is thought that he has run to cover in some chamber or other. We are looking everywhere."
"Who is the man?" asked Marguerite, in a tone of indifference.
"M. de la Tournoire, of the French Guards."
"Very well. Look where you please. If he came into my apartments, he must have done so while I attended the petite levée of the King; otherwise I should have seen him. What are you looking at? The door of that closet? He could not have gone there without my knowledge. One of the maids locked it the other day, and the key has disappeared." Whereupon, she tried the door, herself, as if in proof of her assertion.
"Then he cannot be there," said De L'Archant, deceived by her manner; and he took his leave.
For some minutes I heard nothing but the monotonous voice of Marguerite as she read aloud to herself from her "Book of Hours."
Then she opened my door again. Through the tiny crack I saw a part of her head.
"Monsieur," she said to me, keeping her eyes upon the book, and retaining the same changeless tone of one reading aloud, "you see that you are safe, for the present. No one in the palace, save one of my maids, is aware that I know you or have reason to take the slightest interest in you. Your entrance to my apartments was made so naturally and openly that it left no impression on those who saw you come in. I have since sent every one of those persons on some errand, so that all who might happen to remember your coming here will suppose that you left during their absence. It was well that I brought you here; had I merely told you to leave the palace, immediately, you would not have known exactly how matters stood, and you would have been arrested at your lodgings, or on your way to your place of duty. By this time, orders have gone to the city gates to prevent your leaving Paris. Before noon, not only the body-guard, the Provost of the palace, and the French and Scotch Guards will be on the lookout for you, but also the gendarmes of the Provost of Paris. That is why we must be careful, and why stealth must be used in conveying you out of Paris."
"They make a very important personage of me," I said, in a low tone.