As she spoke, she drew her chair a little further from that of her friend; and, placing it in the exact position which the ceremonious intercourse of that day pointed out, she remained with the glove drawn off from one fair hand, which, dropping gracefully over the arm of the _fauteuil_, continued to hold her small black mask, twirling it as listlessly round and round as ever the fair hand of fashionable dame in our own days played with a glove, to show her skin's whiteness or her brilliant rings. Eugenie de Menancourt's eyes sought the door with an expression of anxiety; but Beatrice, on the contrary, gazed vacantly through the window towards the buildings on the opposite side of the river; and the visitors had entered the room, and were already speaking to her friend, before she appeared to be conscious of their presence, or condescended to notice them. Turning her head at length, she fixed her eyes upon a square-built, powerful man, with a somewhat heavy, but not unpleasing, countenance; who, richly dressed, and followed by two or three gentlemen, in a more gay and smart, but not more magnificent, costume, was speaking to Mademoiselle de Menancourt, with all that courteous respect which chivalrous times, then just passing away, had left behind them. "Good morrow, my lord Duke!" said Beatrice, as the visitor turned towards her: "I anticipated not the pleasure of seeing your Highness here to day. Good faith! have you so much ease in a beleaguered city, as to exercise your horses in visiting ladies before noon? On my honour, I will be a soldier, for 'tis the idlest life I know, and only fit for a woman." "I came but to ask briefly after your fair friend's health," replied the Duke; "and knew not that I should have to risk with you, gay lady, one of our old encounters of sharp words. I trust, however, your health is better." "Did you ever see me look more beautiful, Duke of Mayenne?" asked Beatrice, with a gay toss of her head; "and can you ask if I am ill? But as to my _friend's_ health, if you would that she should be well, and keep well, let her go out of Paris, home to her own dwelling; and keep her not here, where one is surrounded, night and day, with the sound of cannon and arquebuses. Do you intend that it should be said, in future, that carrying on the war against women and children was first introduced into modern Europe by the Duke of Mayenne and the Catholic League, that you keep a lady here a close prisoner in your beleaguered capital?" "Not as a prisoner, fair lady," answered the Duke of Mayenne; "God forbid that either I or she should look upon her situation as one of imprisonment; but, being lieutenant-general of the kingdom, and, consequently, her lawful guardian and protector, till marriage gives her a better, I should be wanting both in duty and in courtesy, were I to leave her in a distant and distracted province, in a time of unfortunate civil war."