"Because my mother would have taken my part."

Aramis hesitated. "Yes, monseigneur; more powerful than your mother."

"Seeing, then, that my nurse and preceptor were carried off, and that I,
also, was separated from them - either they were, or I am, very dangerous
to my enemy?"

"Yes; but you are alluding to a peril from which he freed himself, by
causing the nurse and preceptor to disappear," answered Aramis, quietly.

"Disappear!" cried the prisoner, "how did they disappear?"

"In a very sure way," answered Aramis - "they are dead."

The young man turned pale, and passed his hand tremblingly over his
face. "Poison?" he asked.

"Poison."

The prisoner reflected a moment. "My enemy must indeed have been very
cruel, or hard beset by necessity, to assassinate those two innocent
people, my sole support; for the worthy gentleman and the poor nurse had
never harmed a living being."

"In your family, monseigneur, necessity is stern. And so it is necessity
which compels me, to my great regret, to tell you that this gentleman and
the unhappy lady have been assassinated."

"Oh, you tell me nothing I am not aware of," said the prisoner, knitting