"His majesty----"
"Nay, let his majesty speak for himself--for once," said the man with the gray eyes--and even in her terror and confusion Madeline saw that all turned to him with a single movement. "Mistress Toussaint did but chat with La Nouë and myself, during her father's absence. But she knows us; or one of us. If any be to blame it is I. Let her stay. I will answer for her fidelity."
"Nay, but she is a woman, sire," some one objected.
"Ay, she is, good Poulain," and he turned to the speaker with a singularly bright smile. "So we are safe, for there is no woman in France would betray Henry of Bourbon!"
A laugh went round. Some one mentioned the Duchess.
"True!" said Henry, for Henry it was, he whom the Leaguers called the Béarnais and the Politiques the King of Navarre, but whom later generations have crowned as the first of French kings--Henry the Great. "True! I had forgotten her. I must beware of her gold scissors. We have two crowns already, and want not another of her making. But come, let us to business without ceremony. Be seated, gentlemen; and while we consider whether our plans hold good, Mistress Toussaint--" he paused to look kindly at the terrified girl--"will play the sentry for us."
Madeline's presence within a few feet of their council-board was soon forgotten by the eager men sitting about it. And in a sense she forgot them. She heard, it is true, their hopes and plans, the chief a scheme to surprise Paris by introducing men hidden in carts piled with hay. She heard how Henry and La Nouë had entered, and who had brought them in, and how it was proposed to smuggle them out again; and many details of men and means and horses; who were loyal and who disaffected, and who might be bought over, and at what price. She even took note of the manner of each speaker as he leaned forward, and brought his face within the circle of light, marking who were known to her before, substantial citizens these, constant at mass and market, and who were strangers; men fiercer-looking, thinner, haughtier, more restless, with the stamp of constant peril at the corners of their eyes, and swords some inches longer than their neighbors'.
She saw and heard this and reasoned dully on it. But all the time her mind was paralyzed by a dreadful sense of some great evil awaiting her, something with which she must presently come face to face, though her faculties had not grasped it yet. Men's lives! Ah, yes, men's lives! The girl had been bred in secret as a Huguenot. She had been taught to revere the great men of the religion, and not the weakness of the cause, not even her lover's influence had sapped her loyalty to it.
Presently there was a stir about the table. The men rose. "Then that arrangement meets your views, sire," said La Nouë.
"Perfectly. I sleep to-night at my good friend Mazeau's," the king answered, "and leave to-morrow about noon by St. Martin's gate. Yes, let that stand."