She spoke with a sparkling eye, and an expression of the most lively resentment; so that, had M. de Perrot been in my place I think that he would have shed more tears. I was myself somewhat dashed, though I knew the prudence that governed her in her most impetuous sallies; still, to avoid the risk of hearing things which we might both afterwards wish unsaid, I came to the point. "I fear that I have timed my visit ill, Madame," I said. "You have some complaint against me." "Only that you are like the others," she answered with a fine contempt. "You profess one thing and do another." "As for example?" "For example!" she replied, with a scornful laugh. "How many times have you told me that you left women, and intrigues in which women had part, on one side?" I bowed. "And now I find you--you and that Perrot, that creature!--intriguing against me; intriguing with some country chit to--" "Madame!" I said, cutting her short with a show of temper, "where did you get this?" "Do you deny it?" she cried, looking so beautiful in her anger that I thought I had never seen her to such advantage. "Do you deny that you took the King there?" "No. Certainly I took the King there." "To Perrot's? You admit it?" "Certainly," I said, "for a purpose." "A purpose!" she cried with withering scorn. "Was it not that the King might see that girl?" "Yes," I replied patiently, "it was." She stared at me. "And you can tell me that to my face!" she said. "I see no reason why I should not, Madame," I replied easily--"I cannot conceive why you should object to the union--and many why you should desire to see two people happy. Otherwise, if I had had any idea, even the slightest, that the matter was obnoxious to you, I would not have engaged in it." "But--what was your purpose then?" she muttered, in a different tone. "To obtain the King's good word with M. de Perrot to permit the marriage of his son with his niece; who is, unfortunately, without a portion." Madame uttered a low exclamation, and her eyes wandering from me, she took up--as if her thoughts strayed also--a small ornament; from the table beside her. "Ah!" she said, looking at it closely. "But Perrot's son did he know of this?" "No," I answered, smiling. "But I have heard that women can love as well as men, Madame. And sometimes ingenuously."