More he would have said in the same strain, but Lesperon cut him short and bade him attend to the issue now before him. They discussed it at some length, but always under the cloud in which my mysteriousness enveloped it, and, in the end, encouraged by my renewed assurances that I could best save myself if Lesperon were not taken with me, the Gascon consented to my proposals.
Marsac was on his way to Spain. His sister, he told us, awaited him at Carcassonne. Lesperon should set out with him at once, and in forty-eight hours they would be beyond the reach of the King's anger.
"I have a favour to ask of you, Monsieur de Marsac," said I, rising; for our business was at an end. "It is that if you should have an opportunity of communicating with Mademoiselle de Lavedan, you will let her know that I am not--not the Lesperon that is betrothed to your sister."
"I will inform her of it, monsieur," he answered readily; and then, of a sudden, a look of understanding and of infinite pity came into his eyes. "My God!" he cried.
"What is it, monsieur?" I asked, staggered by that sudden outcry.
"Do not ask me, monsieur, do not ask me. I had forgotten for the moment, in the excitement of all these revelations. But--" He stopped short.
"Well, monsieur?"
He seemed to ponder a moment, then looking at me again with that same compassionate glance, "You had better know," said he. "And yet--it is a difficult thing to tell you. I understand now much that I had not dreamt of. You--you have no suspicion of how you came to be arrested?"
"For my alleged participation in the late rebellion?"
"Yes, yes. But who gave the information of your whereabouts? Who told the Keeper of the Seals where you were to be found?"
"Oh, that?" I answered easily. "Why, I never doubted it. It was the coxcomb Saint-Eustache. I whipped him--"
I stopped short. There was something in Marsac's black face, something in his glance, that forced the unspoken truth upon my mind.
"Mother in heaven!" I cried. "Do you mean that it was Mademoiselle de Lavedan?"
He bowed his head in silence. Did she hate me, then, so much as that? Would nothing less than my death appease her, and had I utterly crushed the love that for a little while she had borne me, that she could bring herself to hand me over to the headsman?
God! What a stab was that! It turned me sick with grief--aye, and with some rage not against her, oh, not against her; against the fates that had brought such things to pass.