Shouts of laughter were ringing through the hall, when the valet opened the door, and announced the Count d'Aubin. The Duchess instantly looked up, with a smile of pleasure; but, remarking the ruffled aspect of the Count, she instantly exclaimed--"Why, how now, D'Aubin! how now! After so long an absence, do you come back to our feet, not like a penitent suing for pardon, but rather like a harsh husband, full of scoldings and tempests?" The cause of those gloomy looks, which she remarked, was not one which Philip d'Aubin would willingly have communicated to the gay, satirical Duchess de Montpensier, who, to the libertine freedom common to the whole court, added many a wily art, and many a vindictive passion, derived from the angry political factions of the time. The immediate cause of his visit to Paris, however, afforded him a ready motive to assign for his dark brow and agitated look. "Well may I be disturbed, madam," he replied, after a hasty word of salutation, "when my noble cousin, St. Real, confiding in an authentic pass, from the hands of your Highness's brother, has been entrapped in the neighbourhood of Senlis, and is now, as I am informed, a prisoner in Paris!" "Nay, but why bear such a countenance into our presence, Count d'Aubin?" rejoined the Duchess; "I am guiltless of entrapping your cousin, or of even trying to entrap yourself; though, once upon a time," she added in a low tone, "I may have seen the Count d'Aubin a tassel not unwilling to be lured;" and she looked up at him with a glance in which reproach was so skilfully mingled with playfulness and tenderness, that D'Aubin, although he knew that full two-thirds of the pageant which daily played its part on her countenance, was mere artifice, could not refrain from smiling in his turn. "Ever willing to be lured, dear lady, where the lure is fair!" he replied; "and though I certainly came to speak reproaches, they were not to you. I know not why your blockhead groom," he added, "brought me hither, unless he divined, indeed, how much the sight of your Highness softens all wrath. My business was with your brother, the Duke of Mayenne." The Duchess muttered to herself--"That will never do! If he see Mayenne, he will spoil the whole! I appeal to you, fair ladies and gentlemen all," she exclaimed aloud, with one of those quick and happy turns of artifice, which no one knew better how to employ, "if this is not a high crime and misdemeanour in the court of love and gallantry, to tell a lady, whom he dare not deny to be fair, that he came for any other purpose on earth than to see herself?" "Blasphemy! blasphemy! utter blasphemy!" cried half a dozen voices. "Judge him, fair lady, for his great demerits!"