Peyrolles laughed feebly. "Love, I suppose." Æsop waved the suggestion away. "Don't talk like a fool. I expect old Caylus made her. He was a grim old chip, after my own heart, and our widow had no friends. Oh yes; I expect daddy Caylus made her marry Gonzague. What a joke!--what an exquisite joke!" Peyrolles replied, with attempted dignity: "You didn't travel all the way from Madrid to talk about my master's marriage, I suppose." In a moment Æsop's manner became ferocious again. Again he thrust forward his seamed, malicious face, and again the yellow mask drew back from it. "You are right, I did not. I came because I am tired of Spain, because I lust for Paris, because I desire to enter the service of his Highness Prince Louis de Gonzague, to whom I am about to render a very great service." Peyrolles looked at him thoughtfully, the yellow mask wrinkled with dubiety. "Are you serious about this service?" he asked. "Can you really perform what your letter seemed to promise?" "I should not have travelled all this way if I did not know what I was about," Æsop growled. "I think it matters little if I have lost Lagardere if I have found the daughter of Nevers." Peyrolles was thoroughly interested, and leaned eagerly across the table. "Then you think you have found her?" Æsop grinned at him maliciously. "As good as found her. I have found a girl who may be--come, let's put a bold face on it and say must be--Nevers's daughter. I told you so much in my letter." Peyrolles now drew back again with a cautious look on his face as he answered, cautiously: "My master, Prince Gonzague, must be satisfied. Where is this girl?" Æsop continued: "Here. I found her in Madrid, the dancing-girl of a band of gypsies. She is the right age. The girl is clever, she is comely, her hair is of the Nevers shade, her color of the Nevers tint. She is, by good-fortune, still chaste, for when I first began to think of this scheme the minx was little more than a child, and the gypsies, who were willing to do my bidding, kept her clean for my need. Oh, she has been well prepared, I promise you! She has been taught to believe that she was stolen from her parents in her babyhood, and will meet any fable half-way. She will make a most presentable heiress to the gentleman we killed at Caylus--" Peyrolles agitated his yellow hands deprecatingly. He did not like the revival of unpleasant memories. "My good friend!" he protested. Æsop eyed him with disdain. "Well, we did kill him, didn't we? You don't want to pretend that he's alive now, after that jab in the back your master gave him fifteen years ago?" Peyrolles wriggled on his chair in an agony of discomfort. "Hush, for Heaven's sake! Don't talk like that!" Æsop slapped the table till the glasses rang. "I'll talk as I please." Peyrolles saw it was useless to argue with the hunchback, and submitted. "Yes, yes; but let bygones be bygones. About this girl?"