"Because," he said, flushing under her eyes, "it--it is not easy for me to do. And I did not see my way." "It looked like it." "But I see it now if you will help me. You have only to take a packet of letters from his room--and you go there when you please--and he is yours! While you have the letters he dare not stir hand or foot, lest you bring him to the scaffold!" "Bring him to the scaffold?" "Get the letters, give them to me, and I will answer for the rest." Louis' voice was low, but he shook with excitement. "See!" he continued, his eyes at all times prominent, almost starting from his head, "it might be done this minute. This minute!" "It might," the girl replied, watching him coldly. "But it will not be done either this minute or at all unless you tell me what is in the letters, and how you come to know about them." Should he tell her? He fancied that he had no choice. "Messer Blondel the Syndic wants the letters," he answered sullenly. And, urged farther by her expression of disbelief, he told the astonished girl the story which Blondel had told him. The fact that he believed it went far with her; why, for the rest, doubt a story so extraordinary that it seemed to bear the stamp of truth? "And that is all?" she said when he came to the end. "Is it not enough?" "It may be enough," she replied, her resolute manner in strange contrast with his cowardly haste. "Only there is a thing not clear. If the Syndic knows what is in the letters, why does he not seize them and Basterga with them--the traitor with the proof of his treason?" "Because he is afraid of the Grand Duke," Louis cried. "If he seize Basterga and miss the proof of his treason, what then?" "Then he is not sure that the letters are there?" Anne replied keenly. "He is not sure that they would be there when he came to seize them," Louis answered. "Basterga might have a dozen confederates in the house ready at a sign to destroy the letters." She nodded. "And that is what they will make us out to be," he continued, his voice sinking as his fears returned upon him. "The Syndic threatened as much; and such things have happened a hundred times. I tell you, if we do not do something, we shall suffer with him. But do it, and he is in your power! And if he has any hold on you, it is gone!" The blood surged to her face. Hold upon her? Ah! Rage--or was it hope?--lightened in her eyes and transformed her face. She was thinking, he guessed, of the hundred insults she had undergone at Basterga's hands, of the shame-compelling taunts to which she had been forced to listen, of the loathed touch she had been forced to bear. If there was aught in her mind beyond this, any motive deeper or more divine, he did not perceive it; enough, that he saw that she wavered, and he pressed her.