“Spoken like a Malincourt; like my sainted sister’s own child. Keep that face for the Governor to-morrow, Gabrielle. Smile to him and upon him, and the rule of Morvaix and all in it will be inspired by your gentle heart.” And with that thought he deemed it judicious to end the interview. CHAPTER IV THE DUKE’S PROPOSAL There was one very bitter heart in the maison on the following morning. Jacques Dauban had spent a bad night, groaning over aching bones and head, brooding over his wrongs and setting his cunning wits to work to devise a scheme of revenge. Very ill results had followed that meeting with Lucette in the pine-walk. She had kept the tryst and had wheedled out of him a part of what he knew. He had not told her much; only warned her to do her utmost to prevent the marriage between Gabrielle and Gerard de Cobalt, hinting at dark deeds of which he dared not speak, and denouncing Gerard as both an unscrupulous scoundrel and a tool in the hands of others greater and more villainous even than he. She might have got more from him, but it chanced that Denys St. Jean had also conceived a fancy for a stroll in the wood, and had come suddenly upon the pair in close and intimate talk. His quick temper had fired instantly, and the consequences to Jacques Dauban had been serious. Denys was strong in the arm, and his cudgel, snatched hastily from a tree, thick and heavy; and there was scarcely a bone in the writhing, wriggling spy’s body which did not ache and stab and pain. And Lucette had laughed. The laugh was the worst of all. It was in his ears all through the paining hours of the night; maddening him, taunting him, and goading him almost to a frenzy of wrath and spite. He read it as the proof that she had fooled him; that she had laid the trap to bring the hot-headed devil upon him; and had planned his humiliation and beating. He would be revenged; and as he twisted and turned and groaned in an anguish of mind even more than of body, a scheme came to him; and in the congenial task of working it out and maturing it, his own sufferings were more than half forgotten. His first thought had been to lay in wait for Denys and, catching him unawares, to thrust a dagger between his ribs swiftly from behind; but there was too much risk. He might fail to strike true, and then--the horrible fear of what would happen to himself in such a case killed the plan at once. The next thought was to hire some one in Morvaix to do what he with his own hand was afraid to attempt, but his cunning made him hesitate to place himself in any other’s power. And so that idea had in its turn to be abandoned. But out of it had come the scheme which he saw was at once safe and sure. He would remain in the background all unsuspected even by Lucette, and might mask his work in any way he wished; and yet Denys would die as surely as if his was the hand which plunged the dagger home to his heart. Aye, much more surely.