"And this maid with as many suitors as Penelope, is she very beautiful?"
she inquired slyly.
"France does not hold her equal," I answered, falling like a simpleton into
the trap she had set me.
"This to me?" quoth she archly. "Fi donc, Gaston! Your evil ways have
taught you as little gallantry as dissimulation." And her merry ripple of
laughter showed me how in six words I had betrayed that which I had been at
such pains to hide.
But before I could, by protestations, plunge deeper than I stood already,
the Duchesse turned the conversation adroitly to the matter of that letter
of hers, wherein she had bidden me wait upon her.
A cousin of mine--one Marion de Luynes, who, like myself, had, through the
evil of his ways, become an outcast from his family--was lately dead.
Unlike me, however, he was no adventurous soldier of fortune, but a man of
peace, with an estate in Provence that had a rent-roll of five thousand
livres a year. On his death-bed he had cast about him for an heir,
unwilling that his estate should swell the fortunes of the family that in
life had disowned him.
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