"Let her laugh!" answered I bravely, "better she should laugh than that a woman left alone in Tours should have bitter cause to weep." "One woman!" she cried with a sudden pained sharpness, "oh! what does one woman matter? If your King has his way it will not be one woman who will weep but thousands; yes, thousands, thousands." "Not my King," I answered, and again I will say, answered bravely. More bravely than I knew. To say such words on the streets of Tours risked more than the being laughed at for a woman's sake; Tristan's House of the Great Nails was grim warrant for the danger. "Not my King, I am of Flanders, and so--not my King." "The better fortune yours!" she answered curtly. "I would rather trust the grossest bully in Tours than Louis of France." "Then," said I, giving tongue to the thought that had troubled me these ten minutes, "why come to Tours at all, with Louis only a mile away?" "Because it was safest so. Do you think he would look for me under the shadow of Tristan's gallows? And because, too, I am a woman, Monsieur Hellewyl, and hoped--hoped I might bring back a message of peace to my--my--mistress." With the words in her mouth, words caught by a half-breath of tears, she turned into a little covered archway opening off the street, and dropped a curtsey. "I lodge here, Monsieur, and my mistress and I both thank you for your care--though this time there was no man to kill!" "To-morrow----" I began. "To-morrow?" echoed she, looking back at me with her foot on the doorstep, "I hope there is no To-morrow for me in Tours, for if there is, it will be passed dangling from one of Tristan's flesh hooks!" and with a little gesture of farewell, she was gone. Nor had Tours a To-morrow for me either; by midday I was behind the triple walls of Plessis. CHAPTER X PLESSIS-LES-TOURS That, of course, was Monsieur de Commines' doing. He had said, Give me seven days; but he took no more than one, and added to the favour of haste the grace of coming himself to tell me of his success. I had just returned from a fruitless enquiry at Mademoiselle's lodgings when the landlord met me at the door. To see his change of countenance was a vision of the contemptible in human nature. "Monsieur is a friend of Monseigneur the Prince de Talmont and I did not know it!" he said plaintively, his hands lightly crossed upon the servile hinge below his chest. "His Excellency is within asking for your Lordship. Ah! Monsieur, had I but known! What a supper I could have served, what a room I could have prepared----" "And what a bill would have followed! Be easy, a man can only sleep on one bed at a time. Where is Monsieur de Commines?" "Monsieur le Prince does me the honour to wait in the garden. He has already given orders----" But Martin, who had heard my voice, pushed him aside.