Then the lady had come to the inn. Perhaps she was one
who had already some kind of relations with the governor and had now come
purposely to meet him. What had passed between her and the governor we
had not overheard. It might easily have been the proposal by him, and the
acceptance by her, of the mission against me. Such a task might better be
entrusted to a woman. Catherine herself had employed women to entrap men
who would have been on their guard against men. Certain Huguenot
gentlemen had been especially susceptible to the charms of her
accomplished decoys. Then the governor and his secretary had gone, and
the latter had reappeared with De Berquin. It might really be that this
woman, whether she were Mlle. de Varion, or whether she merely took that
name in order to get my confidence without having to make the risky
pretence of being a Protestant, was desired by Montignac and yet disliked
him, and that De Berquin had been hired indeed to hold her forcibly for
the secretary after she had accomplished her mission. But her ingenuous
signs of a tender feeling for me? A device to blind me and win my trust,
and so, through me, get the confidence of my supposed friend, La
Tournoire. Her grief on the journey? Mere pretence, in order to bear out
her story and enlist my sympathy. Her periods of silence and meditation?
She was thinking out the details of her plot. Her questions about La
Tournoire? A means of learning what manner of man she would have to deal
with, and of finding out his hiding-place at a time when it would be
easiest to despatch her boy with a description of it to the governor.
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