I would fain have persuaded her to conclude it at once, and endeavoured to make her believe that I was really not fatigued; but I rather imagine that my appearance contradicted the assertion, and, adhering to her determination, she left me to repose.
It may be easily conceived, that every word I had just heard had interested me deeply, and Suzette might certainly have continued her history without agitating me more than my own thoughts did while she was absent. I counted every moment till her return; and when at length she reappeared, I eagerly besought her to proceed with her explanation, which she did at once, in a brief--even abrupt style, that led me to imagine that she was under the constant apprehension of interruption.
"As I had anticipated," she continued, "the Count de Mesnil was not long in following us into Brittany; and, having seen how easily the mind of Monsieur de Villardin was to be worked upon, Gaspard and myself determined, as we could not render the Duchess guilty, to render her husband jealous. Nor did we now seek to do so incompletely, by raising vague suspicions, but we proposed to give him such evidence of the conduct of Madame de Villardin, and of your connivance in the views of the Count de Mesnil, that we should rid ourselves of you for ever, place the Duke entirely in our power, and gain the highest place in the confidence of our lord.
"Monsieur de Mesnil was not at all unaware of the influence of the maid in such pursuits as that in which he was then engaged, and, on his first visit to the Prés Vallée, he found an opportunity of holding a long conference with me, the result of which was no small increase of hope on his part, and considerable profits on mine. Although he was, it is true, one of those men who call themselves men of pleasure, and who make intrigue not only a business, but a toilsome one, in the present instance I found that he had been drawn beyond all cold calculations, and that he was certainly in love as deeply and passionately as any boy. He besought me, eagerly and anxiously, to obtain for him but a lock of my mistress's hair; and of course this was no very difficult undertaking. The lock was easily cut away unperceived, while I was superintending her toilet; and, having enclosed it in the locket which the Count had given me for the purpose, I took the liberty of adding thereto part of a broad blue riband which my mistress had bought just before we quitted Paris, trusting that the ingenuity of Gaspard and myself would easily find some means of bringing these objects under the notice of Monsieur de Villardin. The next thing was, if possible, to make you the bearer of the packet to Monsieur de Mesnil; and Gaspard caused one of the younger pages to give the locket itself, carefully wrapped in numerous envelopes, into your hands, begging you, the first time you passed in hunting near the château of the Count, to deliver it to his intendant. The outer paper was addressed to the intendant, the inner bore the superscription of Monsieur de Mesnil, written in a hand as nearly similar to that of the Duchess as I could make it. The boy who gave it to you was told, in case of after-inquiry on the part of Monsieur de Villardin, to say boldly that Gaspard gave it him; Gaspard was to put it upon me, and I was at once to avow, that I had received the packet from Madame de Villardin, each declaring our ignorance of the contents, but Gaspard vowing that he had heard the Duchess direct me to place it carefully in your hands, as you would know what to do with it. In addition to this, I was to excuse my not having given it to you myself, on the score of my dislike to you; and Gaspard was to make the same apology, adding, that he had seen too much of your cogging with Monsieur de Mesnil to have anything to do with the business. The next part of our plan was to have you so well watched, that we should obtain information of when you were likely to deliver the packet, which we well knew you would do boldly and without concealment; and then to excite the suspicions of the Duke, who, we doubted not, would instantly stop the packet and examine its contents.