"But--what is it?" She was frightened.
"If Mademoiselle----"
Then she turned without more and went back into the room, and the three followed, and her woman and Madame Carlat. She stood resting one hand on the table while Javette with shaking fingers lighted the candles. Then, "Now, monsieur," she said in a hard voice, "if you will tell me your business?"
"You do not know me?" The stranger's eyes dwelt kindly and pitifully on her.
She looked at him steadily, crushing down the fears which knocked at her heart. "No," she said. "And yet I think I have seen you."
"You saw me a week last Sunday," the stranger answered sorrowfully. "My name is La Tribe. I preached that day, Mademoiselle, before the King of Navarre. I believe that you were there."
For a moment she stared at him in silence, her lips parted. Then she laughed, a laugh which set the teeth on edge. "Oh, he is clever!" she cried. "He has the wit of the priests! Or the devil! But you come too late, monsieur! You come too late! The bird has flown."
"Mademoiselle----"
"I tell you the bird has flown!" she repeated vehemently. And her laugh of joyless triumph rang through the room. "He is clever, but I have outwitted him! I have----"
She paused and stared about her wildly, struck by the silence; struck, too, by something solemn, something pitiful in the faces that were turned on her. And her lip began to quiver. "What?" she muttered. "Why do you look at me so? He has not"--she turned from one to another--"he has not been taken?"