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“But this castle, then?”

“Is mine.”

“This room?”

“Is yours.”

“So I am your prisoner?”

“Nearly.”

“But this is a shocking abuse of power!”

“No grand words. Let’s sit down and have a quiet chat, as brother and sister ought to do.”

Then, turning towards the door, he saw that the young officer was awaiting his final orders.

“Well done,” he said, “I thank you. Leave us, now, Mr. Felton.”175

L

A BROTHER CHATS WITH HIS SISTER

While Lord de Winter was shutting the door, pushing open a blind, and moving a seat close to his sister-in-law’s armchair, Milady, lost in thought, gazed into the depths of possibility and discovered the whole plot that she had not even been able to glimpse as long as she did not know what hands she had fallen into. She knew her brother-in-law for a proper gentleman, an avid hunter, an intrepid gambler, forward with women, but of a strength inferior to hers in regard to intrigue. How had he found out about her arrival? Had her seized? Why was he holding her?

Athos had indeed said a few words to her which proved that the conversation she had had with the cardinal had fallen on other ears; but she could not admit that he had been able to dig a countermine so quickly and so boldly.

She feared rather that her previous operations in England had been discovered. Buckingham might have guessed who it was that had cut off the two pendants, and be revenging himself for that little betrayal. But Buckingham was incapable of committing any violence against a woman, above all if that woman was thought to have acted from a feeling of jealousy.

This supposition seemed to her the most probable. It seemed to her that they wanted to be revenged for the past, and not to forestall the future. However, she congratulated herself in any case on having fallen into the hands of her brother-in-law, with whom she counted on getting off lightly, rather than those of an outright and intelligent enemy.

“Yes, let’s chat, brother,” she said, with a sort of cheerfulness, resolved as she was to draw from the conversation, despite all the dissimulation Lord de Winter might bring to it, the enlightenment she needed to govern her conduct in the future.

“So you decided to return to England,” said Lord de Winter, “despite the determination you so often showed me in Paris never again to set foot on British territory?”

Milady replied to his question with another question.

“First of all,” she said, “tell me how you could have had me watched so closely as to be informed in advance not only of my arrival, but also of the day, the hour, and the port I would arrive in?”

Lord de Winter adopted the same tactic as Milady, thinking that, since his sister-in-law was using it, it must be the right one.

“But, you tell me, my dear sister,” he picked up, “what you have come to England for.”

“Why, I came to see you,” replied Milady, not knowing how greatly this answer deepened the suspicions already awakened in her brother-in-law’s mind by d’Artagnan’s letter, and wishing only to snare her listener’s goodwill by means of a lie.

“Ah, to see me?” Lord de Winter said slyly.

“Of course, to see you. What is astonishing in that?”

“And you had no other motive for coming to England than to see me?”

“No.”

“And so it was for me alone that you took the trouble of crossing the Channel?”

“For you alone.”

“Damn, what affection, sister!”

“But am I not your closest relative?” asked Milady, in a tone of the most touching naïveté.

“And even my sole heir, isn’t that so?” Lord de Winter said in his turn, fixing his eyes on Milady’s eyes.

However much control she had over herself, Milady could not help giving a start, and as, in uttering these last words, Lord de Winter had placed his hand on his sister’s arm, the start did not escape him.

Indeed, the thrust was direct and deep. The first thought that came to Milady’s mind was that she had been betrayed by Kitty, and that it was she who had told the baron of that interested aversion, some tokens of which she had