'I keep but three lackeys now, madame.' Still it is creditable,' my mother muttered thoughtfully, her eyes shining.

'Your dress, however, Gaston--only my eyes are weak--seems to me--' 'Tut, tut! It is but a disguise,' I answered quickly.
'I might have known that,' she rejoined, sinking back with a smile and a sigh of content.

'But when I first saw you I was almost afraid that something had happened to you.

And I have been uneasy lately,' she went on, releasing my hand, and beginning to play with the coverlet, as though the remembrance troubled her.

'There was a man here a while ago--a friend of Simon Fleix there--who had been south to Pau and Nerac, and he said there was no M.de Marsac about the Court.' 'He probably knew less of the Court than the wine-tavern,' I answered with a ghastly smile.
'That was just what I told him,' my mother responded quickly and eagerly.