"A curious question that," said he, knitting his brows.

"Perhaps. But will you not answer it?"

"I am twenty-one," said he. "What of it?"

"You are twenty, mon cousin," Roxalanne corrected him.

He looked at her a second with an injured air.

"Why, true - twenty! That is so," he acquiesced; and again, "what
of it?" he demanded.

"What of it, monsieur?" I echoed. "Will you forgive me if I
express amazement at your precocity, and congratulate you upon it?"

His brows went if possible closer together and his face grew very
red. He knew that somewhere a pitfall awaited him, yet hardly where.

"I do not understand you."

"Bethink you, Chevalier. Ten years have flown since this scandal
you refer to. So that at the time of your supping with Bardelys and
the wits of Paris, at the time of his making a confidant of you and
carrying you off to a masque at the Louvre, at the time of his
presenting you to the Duchesse de Bourgogne, you were just ten years
of age. I never had cause to think over-well of Bardelys, but had
you not told me yourself, I should have hesitated to believe him so
vile a despoiler of innocence, such a perverter of youth."