My appearance she greeted by letting fall her book, and lifting up her hands--the loveliest in France--she uttered a little cry of surprise.
"Is it really you, Gaston?" she asked.
Albeit it was growing wearisome to be thus greeted by all to whom I showed myself, yet I studied courtesy in my reply, and then, 'neath the suasion of her kindliness, I related all that had befallen me since first I had journeyed to Blois, in Andrea de Mancini's company, withholding, however, all allusions to my feelings towards Yvonne. Why betray them when they were doomed to be stifled in the breast that begat them? But Madame de Chevreuse had not been born a woman and lived six and forty years to no purpose.
"And this maid with as many suitors as Penelope, is she very beautiful?" she inquired slyly.
"France does not hold her equal," I answered, falling like a simpleton into the trap she had set me.
"This to me?" quoth she archly. "Fi donc, Gaston! Your evil ways have taught you as little gallantry as dissimulation." And her merry ripple of laughter showed me how in six words I had betrayed that which I had been at such pains to hide.
But before I could, by protestations, plunge deeper than I stood already, the Duchesse turned the conversation adroitly to the matter of that letter of hers, wherein she had bidden me wait upon her.
A cousin of mine--one Marion de Luynes, who, like myself, had, through the evil of his ways, become an outcast from his family--was lately dead. Unlike me, however, he was no adventurous soldier of fortune, but a man of peace, with an estate in Provence that had a rent-roll of five thousand livres a year. On his death-bed he had cast about him for an heir, unwilling that his estate should swell the fortunes of the family that in life had disowned him. Into his ear some kindly angel had whispered my name, and the memory that I shared with him the frowns of our house, and that my plight must be passing pitiful, had set up a bond of sympathy between us, which had led him to will his lands to me. Of Madame de Chevreuse--who clearly was the patron saint of those of her first husband's nephews who chanced to tread ungodly ways--my cousin Marion had besought that she should see to the fulfilment of his last wishes.
My brain reeled beneath the first shock of that unlooked-for news. Already I saw myself transformed from a needy adventurer into a gentleman of fortune, and methought my road to Yvonne lay open, all obstacles removed. But swiftly there followed the thought of my own position, and truly it seemed that a cruel irony lay in the manner wherein things had fallen out, since did I declare myself to be alive and claim the Provence estates, the Cardinal's claws would be quick to seize me.