“If you must fight, my lord, if you must ruin Monsieur de la Forêt and a poor Huguenot girl, do it by greater means than this. You have power, you say. Use it then; destroy us, if you will. Send us to the Medici: bring us to the block, murder us--that were no new thing to Lord Leicester. But do not stoop to treachery and falsehood to thrust us down. Oh, you have made me see the depths of shame to-day! But yet”--her voice suddenly changed, a note of plaintive force filled it--“I have learned much this hour--more than I ever knew. Perhaps it is that we come to knowledge only through fire and tears.” She smiled sadly. “I suppose that sometimes, some day, this page of life would have scorched my sight. Oh, my lord, what was there in me that you dared speak so to me? Was there naught to have stayed your tongue and stemmed the tide in which you would engulf me?” He had listened as in a dream at first. She had read him as he might read himself, had revealed him with the certain truth, as none other had done in all his days. He was silent for a long moment, then raised his hand in protest. “You have a strange idea of what makes offence and shame. I offered you marriage,” he said, complacently. “And when I come to think upon it, after all that you have said, fair Huguenot, I see no cause for railing. You call me this and that; to you I am a liar, a rogue, a cut-throat, what you will; and yet, and yet, I will have my way--I will have my way in the end.” “You offered me marriage--and meant it not. Do I not know? Did you rely so little on your compelling powers, my lord, that you must needs resort to that bait? Do you think that you will have your way to-morrow if you have failed to-day?” With a quick change of tone and a cold, scornful laugh he rejoined, “Do you intend to measure swords with me?” “Oh no, my lord,” she answered, quietly, “what should one poor, unfriended girl do in contest with the Earl of Leicester? But yet, in very truth, I have friends, and in my hour of greatest need I shall go seeking.” She was thinking of the Queen. He guessed her thought. “You will not be so mad,” he said, urbanely, again. “Of what can you complain to the Queen? Tut! tut! you must seek other friends than the Majesty of England.” “Then, my lord, I will,” she answered, bravely. “I will seek the help of such a Friend as fails not when all fails, even He who putteth down the mighty from their seats and exalteth the humble.” “Ah, well, if I have not touched your heart,” he answered, gallantly, “I at least have touched your wit and intellect. Once more I offer you alliance. Think well before you decline.”