"No," Gervais answered; "you stood my friend,--my one friend in that house,--as I was yours. I stood at your shoulder in the Montluc affair--you cannot deny that. I have been your ally, your servant, your messenger to mademoiselle, your envoy to Mayenne. I have done all in my power to win you your lady." A shadow fell over Yeux-gris's open face. "That task needs a greater power than yours, my Gervais." He regarded Gervais with a rueful smile, his thoughts of a sudden as far away from me as if I had never set foot in the Rue Coupejarrets. He shook his head, sighing, and said, with a hand on Gervais's shoulder: "It's beyond you, cousin." Gervais brought him back to the point. "Well, I've done what I could for you. But you don't help me when you let loose a spy to warn Lucas." "He shall not go. You know well, cousin, you will be no gladder than I when that knave is dead. But I will not have Félix Broux suffer because he dared speak for the Duke of St. Quentin." "As you choose, then. I will not touch a hair of his head if you keep him from Lucas." Once more he turned away across the room. My bewilderment was so great that the words came out of themselves: "Messieurs, is it Lucas you mean to kill?" Yeux-gris looked at me, not instantly replying. I cried again to him: "Monsieur, is it Lucas or the duke?" Then Yeux-gris, despite a gesture from Gervais, who would have told me nothing I might ask, exclaimed: "Why, Lucas!" He said it in such honest surprise and with such a steady glance that the heavy fear that had hung on me dropped from me like a dead-weight, and suddenly I turned quite dizzy and fell into the nearest chair. A dash of water in the face made me look up, to see Yeux-gris standing wet-handed by me. "Mon dieu!" he cried, "you were as white as the wall. Do you love so much this Lucas who struck you?" "No," I said, rising; "I thought you meant to kill the duke." "Did you take us for Leaguers?" I nodded. He spoke as if actually he felt it important to set himself right in my eyes. "Well, we are none. We are no politicians, but private gentlemen with a grudge to pay. I care not what the parties do. Whether we have the Princess Isabelle or Henry the Huguenot, 'tis all one to me; I am not putting either on the throne. So if you have got it into your head that we are plotting for the League, why, get it out again." "But you are enemies to the Duke of St. Quentin?" He answered me slowly: "We do not love him. But we do not plot his death. He goes his way unharmed by us. We are gentlemen, not bravos." "And Lucas?" "Lucas is my cousin's enemy, and, being a great man's man, skulks behind the bars of the Hôtel st. Quentin and will not face my cousin's sword. So to reach him takes a little plotting. Do you believe me?" I looked into his gray eyes, that had flashed so hotly in my defence, and I could not but believe him. "Yes, monsieur," I said. He regarded me curiously. "The duke's life seems much to you."