"I'll answer that," said Brigitta, and as she spoke, a flush reddened Mademoiselle's cheeks. "Peasant or Grand Madame, we women are all one flesh. If Mademoiselle had come a-visiting my man in the dusk I'd ask the reason why, and ask it sharply, so to make no mischief I came straight to her." "It was well meant," said I, "but----" "But it was not needed," said Mademoiselle, her face still rosy. "I can trust my Grand Seigneur." "Oh, Mademoiselle! Hush! hush!" "True, Monsieur, it was you who were to speak plainer, was it not? At least, so you told me one morning at Morsigny." "Suzanne! Suzanne! do not try me too far, lest I forget myself, my poverty, my broken hopes, everything but----" "But the one thing I pray God you may never forget," said she, finishing my sentence for me a second time, but not as I would have dared. "Do you think I do not know what you are? Whether would you have a woman love a man or a county in Flanders? There in Paris you risked your life to save an unknown woman's honour, there in Tours"--and she laughed a little, not loudly, but the merriest, happiest laugh I had heard for two weeks--"in Tours you were ready to kill a man or two for the same woman's sake, though the wrath of the King was only a mile away in Plessis. Hush! sir, hush! I shall speak. I cannot, I will not, risk the spoiling of my life by a mock modesty. These things are the truth, and my justification. The King hoodwinked you to a folly that was a crime. Oh, Monsieur!" and again she laughed, "who ever denied your simplicity, and even there, in the being hoodwinked, there was that living by ideals which women love--at least in others. Thinking no dishonour you saw none, and so rode to Morsigny to do the King's work. There in Morsigny the serving girl wore to you the crown of womanhood----" "You are Mademoiselle de Narbonne," said I hoarsely. "I was Suzanne D'Orfeuil to you, Monsieur Gaspard de Helville," she retorted, "and you, the friend of the Prince de Talmont, with the building of your fortunes, as you believed, made certain, were not ashamed to stoop. Now I am Suzanne de Narbonne, and you--you are the man who climbed the Grey Leap for my sake, who carried Tristan's halter back to Tristan for my sake, who laid his life at the feet of Louis----" "For my sake!" cried Brigitta. "No!" said Mademoiselle, "but for mine! For mine, because he would not seem little in my eyes. And now he says, You are Mademoiselle de Narbonne! all because of certain acres in Bearn and Bigorre, acres that I love dearly enough, but not so dearly--" "Suzanne! Suzanne!" I cried, drawing her to me inch by inch, drawing her slowly for the bare pleasure of feeling how she hung against my strength, and yet was not loth to come; slowly, slowly, till she was in my arms and I bending over her. "Suzanne, is it true? is it true? Oh! why, why is there a Jan Meert in Poictiers?" With a wrench, just as our lips touched, she twisted herself free from my clasp.