The dice were brought, a small table placed beside them, and Wolfstrom and D'Aubin shook the accursed boxes, and cast throw after throw. Fortune, however, _did_ favour D'Aubin: he won invariably; and though the sums for which they played at that time were too small to make the gain or loss a matter of any consequence, yet the fancy which had taken possession of him made him rejoice more at the winning of a few hundred crowns than if he had acquired a fortune. His lip smiled, his eye sparkled, his cheek glowed; and though the time of Madame de Montpensier's absence was nearly double that which she had anticipated, D'Aubin found it not tedious, even under expectation. At length she returned; and, without a word, laid down a paper on the table before the Count. D'Aubin ran his eye over the promise he had himself drawn up; and there assuredly, at the bottom of the page, stood Mayenne's name in his own handwriting, together with the broad seal of his arms. What arguments she had used, what reasons she had assigned, what motives she had called into action, to obtain that signature, the Duchess did not tell, but gazed for a moment with a look of triumph upon the Count; and then, as her eye caught the dice upon the table, she turned with an air of gay indifference to Wolfstrom, demanding--"Well, sir Albert! have you won the Royalist's gold!" "Good faith, no!" cried the German, throwing the dice into a water-jar of rock-crystal that stood upon the supper-table; "those little demons have played me false, and he has won six hundred of as good crowns of the League as ever were squeezed from a heretic Huguenot." "Well, well!" replied Madame de Montpensier, "if the dice forsake you, turn again to the wine, Sir Albert; there is a resource for you in all time of trouble. Fill me yon Venice glass too; and you, D'Aubin, give me that sweet manchet--for, to tell the truth, the thoughts of this encounter I was about to undergo in your behalf, sir Count, kept me from supper." D'Aubin gracefully spoke his thanks, taking care, however, to veil, in the circumlocutory ornaments employed in that day, all direct allusion to the nature of the service for which he expressed his gratitude. The conversation became gay and animated for half an hour; roamed to a thousand indifferent subjects, touching each with a momentary light--like a sunbeam breaking through the clouds of a windy autumn day, and skipping from point to point in the landscape as the vapours are hurried on before the gale--and then, drooping for a moment, paused as if to breathe the wits of the gay little coterie. Madame de Montpensier took advantage of that minute to rise and depart; and D'Aubin, bidding his male companion "Good night," proceeded to call together his attendants and return to the camp.