"Ah, Mother!" said the cunning scamp, approaching her. "I am very glad to find you at last; my poor master would have been so cast down if I had not been able to execute my commission to you and Madame de Castro." "Who are you, pray, my friend, and whence do you come?" asked the superior, surprised as well as grieved to find that Gabriel had kept so ill the secret she had confided to him. "I come on behalf of Vicomte d'Exmès," rejoined the false Martin-Guerre, affecting a sort of simple-minded artlessness. "You must know Vicomte d'Exmès, I should think! The whole town is talking of nothing but him." "To be sure!" said the superior; "I know our deliverer. We have prayed heartily for him. I had the honor of seeing him here yesterday; and I counted on seeing him again to-day after what he said." "He is coming; yes, his Lordship is coming," continued Arnauld-Martin. "But Monsieur de Coligny delays him; and in his impatience he sent me on in advance to you and to Madame de Castro. Don't be astonished, Mother, that I know that name and pronounce it. Long time loyalty, put to the proof over and over again, justifies my master in trusting as implicitly in me as in himself; and he has no secrets from his trusty and devoted servant. I have only wit and intellect enough, so people say, to love him and protect him; but I have that instinct in good measure, at least, and no one can deny it me, by the relics of Saint Quentin! Oh, pardon me, Mother, for swearing so before you. I didn't realize what I was doing; and habit, you know, and the impulse of the heart--" "It's all right!" said Mother Monique, smiling; "so Monsieur d'Exmès is coming, is he? He will be very welcome. Sister Bénie is very anxious to see him, to have news of the king, who sent him hither." "Ha, ha!" Martin laughed in an idiotic way, and said, "The king, who sent him to St. Quentin, but not to Madame Diane, I suppose." "What do you mean?" asked the superior. "I say, Madame, that I, who love Vicomte d'Exmès as a master and as a brother, am truly glad that you, a woman so worthy of respect and endowed with such abundant authority, should interest yourself a little in the love-affairs of Monseigneur and Madame de Castro." "The love-affairs of Madame de Castro!" cried the horrified superior. "Yes, to be sure," responded the treacherous scoundrel. "Madame Diane must surely have confided everything to you, her real mother and her only friend?" "She has spoken to me in a vague way of suffering in which her heart was involved," said the nun; "but of an unhallowed love, and of the viscount's name, I know nothing, absolutely nothing."