She looked at him. He wore the semi-churchly dress of a scholar of the University. But youth and truth vouched for him, shining from his eyes. So, at least, she thought. Besides, the girl was in a great perplexity.
"I am Claire," she said, "the daughter of him who was Francis Agnew, secret agent from the King of Scots to his brother of Navarre!"
"A heretic, then!" He fell back a step. "An agent of the Bearnais!"
The girl said nothing. She had not even heard him. She was bending over her father and sobbing quietly.
"A Huguenot," muttered the young Leaguer, "an agent of the Accursed!"
He kept on watching her. There was a soft delicate turn of the chin, childish, almost babyish, which made the heart within him like water.
"Chut!" he said, "what I have now to do is to get rid of that ramping steer of a Launay out there. He and his blanket-vending father must not hear of this!"
He went out quietly, sinking noiselessly to the ground behind the arras of the door, and emerging again, as into another world, amid the hum and mutter of professorial argument.
"All this," remarked Doctor Anatole, flapping his little green-covered pulpit with his left hand, "is temporary, passing. The clouds in the sky are not more fleeting than——"
"Guise! Guise! The good Guise! Our prince has come, and all will now be well!"