a duke's ransom," declared Lucette sharply. "I should have to hang myself if I did, in sheer self-shame."
"Pouf! women are worse than men; and you're no better than the rest, I'd be sworn. But you're such a pretty spitfire and say such waspish things; that's what I like in you. But for all your sharp tongue you are as blind as a three-day kitten, and can't tell milk from vinegar when it's under your very nose. You can't even smell it;" and he laughed again.
"Better a blind kitten than a wideawake rat with a keen scent for garbage, Master Dauban," she retorted with a shrug of her shoulders.
"Rats can find other things than garbage, Mistress Lucette. Shall I ask you a question?" He paused, and then with an accent of great cunning, asked—"Why do you think my good master is so interested in this marriage of miladi with M. de Cobalt?"
Lucette laughed airily.
"That's easy to answer, of a surety. Because he is the brother of Mistress Gabrielle's late mother, and it is a family affair."
"There mewed the blind kitten," he cried with another of his triumphant laughs.
"And there squeaked a rat!"
"Does a good man like to see his niece, a pure woman, mated with a scoundrel? Does he work and scheme and strive and plot to force it on? Answer me that, kitten."
"Does even a rat seek to bite the hand that feeds it? Answer me that, rat."
"Feeds it? Out on such feeding," he cried with sudden malevolence. "Uses it, fools it, kicks it, and throws a few husks to it, keeping all the grain for himself. I know what I know, I tell you. And you should know it too if you—but never mind. Go on with your mewing, and when your gay gallant comes, set him
