Finally, in falling back, he came to a sudden stop against a table, and the collision disturbed for an instant his control over his body. In that instant I felt a soft resistance encounter my sword and yield to it. At once, with a feeling of revulsion, I drew my sword out of the casing that his flesh had provided, and stood back. Something wet and warm sprinkled my face. The man gave a low moan and staggered sideways over towards the window. Then he plunged forward on his face. I stooped beside him and turned him over on his back, wetting my gloves with the blood that gushed from his wound and soaked his doublet. At that moment a splash of moonlight appeared on the floor, taking the shape of the window. His head and shoulders lay in this illumined space. I sprang back in horror, crying out his name: "De Noyard! My God, it is you!" "Yes, monsieur," he gasped, "it is De Noyard. I have been trapped. I ought to have suspected." "But I do not understand, monsieur. Surely you could not have attacked Mlle. d'Arency?" "Attacked her! I came here by her appointment!" "But her cry for help?" "It took me by complete surprise. There was a knock on the door--" "Yes,--mine. I, too, came by her appointment!" "Mademoiselle instantly put out the light and began to scream. I thought that the knock frightened her; then that she was mad. I followed to calm her. You entered; you know the rest." "But what does it mean?" "Can you not see?" he said, with growing faintness. "We have been tricked,--I, by her pretense of love and by this appointment, to my death; you, by a similar appointment and her screams, to make yourself my slayer. I ought to have known! she belongs to Catherine, to the Queen-mother. Alas, monsieur! easily fooled is he who loves a woman!" Then I remembered what De Rilly had told me,--that De Noyard's counsels to the Duke of Guise were an obstacle to Catherine's design of conciliating that powerful leader, who aspired to the throne on which her son was seated. "No, no, monsieur!" I cried, unwilling to admit Mlle. d'Arency capable of such a trick, or myself capable of being so duped. "It cannot be that; if they had desired your death, they would have hired assassins to waylay you." Yet I knew that he was right. The strange request that Mlle. d'Arency had made of me in the church was now explained. A kind of smile appeared, for a moment, on De Noyard's face, struggling with his expression of weakness and pain. "Who would go to the expense of hiring assassins," he said, "when honest gentlemen can be tricked into doing the work for nothing? Moreover, when you hire assassins, you take the risk of their selling your secret to the enemy. They are apt to leave traces, too, and the secret instigator of a deed may defeat its object by being found out." "Then I have to thank God that you are not dead. You will recover, monsieur."