Louis de Pavannes' wife! Louis de Pavannes married! If the statement were true--and we could not doubt, looking in her face, that at least she thought she was telling the truth--it meant that we had been fooled indeed! That we had had this journey for nothing, and run this risk for a villain. It meant that the Louis de Pavannes who had won our boyish admiration was the meanest, the vilest of court-gallants. That Mademoiselle de Caylus had been his sport and plaything. And that we in trying to be beforehand with Bezers had been striving to save a scoundrel from his due. It meant all that, as soon as we grasped it in the least. "Madame," said Croisette gravely, after a pause so prolonged that her smile faded pitifully from her face, scared by our strange looks. "Your husband has been some time away from you? He only returned, I think, a week or two ago?" "That is so," she answered, naively, and our last hope vanished. "But what of that? He was back with me again, and only yesterday--only yesterday!" she continued, clasping her hands, "we were so happy." "And now, madame?" She looked at me, not comprehending. "I mean," I hastened to explain, "we do not understand how you come to be here. And a prisoner." I was really thinking that her story might throw some light upon ours. "I do not know, myself," she said. "Yesterday, in the afternoon, I paid a visit to the Abbess of the Ursulines." "Pardon me," Croisette interposed quickly, "but are you not of the new faith? A Huguenot?" "Oh, yes," she answered eagerly. "But the Abbess is a very dear friend of mine, and no bigot. Oh, nothing of that kind, I assure you. When I am in Paris I visit her once a week. Yesterday, when I left her, she begged me to call here and deliver a message." "Then," I said, "you know this house?" "Very well, indeed," she replied. "It is the sign of the 'Hand and Glove,' one door out of the Rue Platriere. I have been in Master Mirepoix's shop more than once before. I came here yesterday to deliver the message, leaving my maid in the street, and I was asked to come up stairs, and still up until I reached this room. Asked to wait a moment, I began to think it strange that I should be brought to so wretched a place, when I had merely a message for Mirepoix's ear about some gauntlets. I tried the door; I found it locked. Then I was terrified, and made a noise." We all nodded. We were busy building up theories--or it might be one and the same theory--to explain this. "Yes," I said, eagerly.