"Oh, my Lord," replied Charles of Montsoreau, "how can I deny you my confidence when you load me with such proofs of your goodness? I do love Mademoiselle de Clairvaut as deeply, as intensely, as passionately, as my brother,--more, more a thousand fold than he or any body else, I believe, is capable of loving. I had some opportunities of rendering her services, and on one of those occasions I was betrayed into words and actions which I fancied must have made her acquainted with all my feelings. It was after that I discovered, my Lord, how madly my brother loved her: it was after that I discovered that the pursuit of my love must bring contention and destruction on my father's house. Had I believed that she loved me, nothing should have made me yield her to any one; for I had the prior claim, I had the prior right: but when I had reason to believe that she had not marked, and did not comprehend all the signs of my affection; when I felt that I could quit her without the appearance of trifling with her regard, though not without the continued misery of my own life, my determination was taken in a moment, and I determined to make the sacrifice, be the consequences what they might. Such, my Lord, is the simple truth; such is the only secret of all my actions." The Duke of Guise bent down his eyes upon the ground with a smile, in the expression of which there was a degree of cynical bitterness. It was somewhat like one of the smiles of the Abbé de Boisguerin; but the Duke's words explained it at once, which the Abbé's never did. "I fear, my young friend," he said, "that the science of women's hearts is a more difficult one than the science of war. You have learnt the one, it would seem, by intuition; in the other you are yet a novice. However, you shall pursue your own course, bearing with you the remembrance that I swear by my own honour--" "Oh swear not, my Lord," replied Charles of Montsoreau; "circumstances may change; she may love him; her love may alter him, and lead him back to noble things." The Duke smiled again. "What I have said," he answered, "is as good as sworn. But have it your own way; I thank you for the confidence you have reposed in me. And now, to show you how I can return it, I have a task to put upon you, an adventure on which to send forth my new made knight. I do not think that Henry either will or dare refuse to give up to me my own relation and ward. The king and I are great friends, God wot! But still I must demand her, and somebody must take a journey to Paris for that purpose. To the capital, doubtless, they have conveyed her; and I trust, my good Logères, that you will not think it below your dignity and merit to seek and bring back a daughter of the House of Guise."