She took it mechanically, her eyes still fixed on his; then, without a
word, steadied perhaps by his own self-command, she began to unfasten
the end.

“You are very kind, M. de Saint-Ermay,” came the Chevalier’s voice.
“Are you sure that my daughter is not trespassing unwarrantably on
your good nature?”

“It was M. de Saint-Ermay who insisted, mon père,” replied
Mademoiselle de Maisonfleur, and a desolate little smile twitched her
mouth for an instant.

“The fact is that I really know how to hold it properly,” said Louis,
half to the girl and half to the others, as he held out his hands and
she put the skein in position. “I advise you to take a lesson from me,
Des Essars.”

“Ah, but could you do it the other way round?” asked Des Essars.
“Could you make the ball if Mademoiselle held the skein?”

Whether Louis would have taken up this challenge was to remain
unknown, for at that instant the turning of a key in the lock reminded
them all that their circle was still incomplete.

“Here are our missing guests,” said the Chevalier, tapping his
snuff-box, “or else, indeed, Jacques with the supper.”

It was neither. The door swung open to reveal an unfamiliar figure—an
official from the _guichet_ of the prison, with a large bunch of keys
in one hand and a paper in the other. A dead silence fell on the room.

“Citizen Chantemerle!” said the man.

Louis looked up for a moment, but he did not stir, and went on
placidly holding the skein, though the hands that had held the ball
were twisted together in their owner’s lap.

The _guichetier_ referred to his paper. “Louis-Adrien Chantemerle,
_ci-devant_ Vicomte de Saint-Ermay. You, there, is not that your
cursed name?”

“A portion of it,” responded Louis lazily. “Your information appears
fragmentary. However, I do recognise myself.” He rose from the chair.
“Mademoiselle, to our next meeting. I regret infinitely that the skein
is not finished after all.” He slipped the wool off his hands and slid
it gently into her lap, and then catching her shaking fingers, he
kissed them with his most courtly air. “Good-bye, Monsieur le
Chevalier. Good-bye, Des Essars.”

“Good-bye, Vicomte,” said the old man, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“I am sorry—I am very sorry.” And he added, in a voice not free from
emotion: “Though our acquaintance has been so short, we shall greatly
miss you.”

Louis loosed Des Essars’ hand and bowed to him. “I wish no more
flattering epitaph,” he said with his charming smile. “Adieu.”

He followed the jailor out of the room, and the girl broke into
hysterical sobbing.

                             CHAPTER XIV

                          CIRCE AND ULYSSES

     “And do you ask what game she plays?
         With me ’tis lost or won;
      With thee ’tis playing still; with him
         It is not well begun;
      But ’tis a game she plays with all
         Beneath the sway of the sun.

     “Thou seest the card that falls—she knows
         The card that followeth;
      Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
         As ebbs thy daily breath;
      When she shall speak, thou’lt learn her tongue,
         And know she calls it Death.”
                                   —D. G. ROSSETTI, _The Card-dealer_.

No woman like Madame d’Espaze, with her notoriety, her lovers, her
political intriguery, her secret power (how great, a matter for
speculation), had ever crossed Gilbert’s path in life. He had time
this morning, as he threaded the streets, to make some picture of
her to himself. Two types of beauty presented themselves to his
imagination; the one dark, voluptuous, imperious, a sort of empress
of vice, the other of that fair and child-like mould which rules
by cajolery. At the door of the Comtesse’s salon he was still
speculating which class would claim her, for his success might
depend upon it.

But she belonged to neither. The Marquis beheld, on a small sofa
covered with yellow damask, a woman—a girl almost—wearing a simple
virginal gown of light Indian muslin, made after the new mode. She
rose as Château-Foix was announced, and he was struck with her grace,
her height, and the grave, nunlike style of her beauty. Here were no
meretricious enhancements; she was not painted, and her beautiful
brown hair, gathered simply into a knot, was innocent of powder or of
any sort of adornment. The trailing folds of white fell from breast to
foot. Gilbert was taken aback, he scarcely knew why. The Comtesse
threw him a look of calm enquiry out of her long placid eyes, ere she
responded to his bow.

“You have come to see me on business, Monsieur, I understand,” she
said, as she rose from her curtsy. “I regret that I could not receive
you last night. Be seated, I pray.”

Gilbert bowed again slightly, but remained standing. “I have come,
Madame,” he said, with great directness, “to know if you can give me
any news of my unfortunate cousin, the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay.”

Madame d’Espaze’s delicate eyebrows went up. “Mon Dieu! Monsieur le
Marquis, you take away my breath,” she said. “Is M. de Saint-Ermay
lost, then?”

“He has been arrested,” replied Château-Foix shortly. Little versed as
he was in the ways of women, he saw that she was going to play with
him, and the prospect was not alluring.

“Ah, he has been arrested, the poor Saint-Ermay?” queried the
Comtesse. “I am desolated, but what would you have? Politics is a
dangerous game.” She breathed out a light little sigh, and sank down
on the sofa. “You should have kept him out of it, Monsieur le
Marquis.”

To this remark, delivered with an indescribable airy malice, Gilbert
made no answer for the moment. But he took the chair which his hostess
had previously indicated to him, and, once seated, he observed coldly:
“You will pardon me for saying, Madame, that this is not a case for
levity.”

“But, Monsieur,” retorted the lady, “I am all seriousness. Though I
do not quite see,” she added, pursing her lips, “why it should be
demanded of me.”

“You did not know then, Madame, that M. de Saint-Ermay was in prison?”
asked Gilbert, looking at her steadily.

Madame d’Espaze shrugged her shoulders. “How should I?”

“Then I must tell you about it,” replied Château-Foix. “I found, a
short time ago, that my cousin was becoming entangled in a scheme
which did not commend itself to me—a scheme which I need not
particularise to you, Madame, and one in which, to be frank, I
suspected a trap. I therefore came to Paris; I endeavoured to dissuade
him from further compromising himself, and especially from continuing
his visits to the chief meeting-place of the two parties—your house. I
failed; and the Vicomte attended your salon last Saturday night, as he
had intended. This morning he was arrested, and I am ignorant even of
the place of his imprisonment.”

Madame d’Espaze had listened quite gravely to this recital, and now
said, without any particular expression in her lazy voice: “I do not
know, Monsieur le Marquis, why you are telling me all this.”

“You do not, then,” retorted her guest, “see any connection between
the constant meetings of Vergniaud and his followers with these young
men at your house, his denunciation of them yesterday in the Manège,
and their almost simultaneous arrest? I do.”

The attack was so direct, and in all probability so unexpected, that
the Comtesse for the first time showed signs of discomposure. She got
up and moved away, her white robe trailing softly on the shining
floor. Half over her shoulder she said: “You talk very strangely, M.
de Château-Foix.”

“Yet I think that what I say is just,” replied Gilbert, on his feet.

“I wonder——” said the Comtesse. Then she turned and faced him. “But
even if it were, it is not a way in which I should allow many people
to speak to me in my house.”

“But not many people come on my mission.”

“Mon Dieu, no, fortunately!” exclaimed Madame d’Espaze with vivacity.
“Fortunately, people do not often come to me and expect me to make
myself responsible for every young hothead who gets himself into
trouble with the authorities. Fortunately, that chair has not often
served as a pulpit nor this sofa as a bench for the congregation.
. . . Never mind, Monsieur le Marquis, but resume your sermon!”

“I was not aware, Madame, that I was preaching,” said Château-Foix
a trifle stiffly. “It was not my intention. I come rather as a
suppliant.”

“With what a menacing tone!” exclaimed the Comtesse, with a little
laugh and a shrug of her beautiful shoulders. She trailed slowly back
to the sofa and sank on the cushions. “And for what, pray, are you
supplicating?”

“For my cousin’s release,” said the Marquis.

Half leaning back among the yellow cushions the Comtesse d’Espaze
surveyed him indolently as he stood before her, very straight, his
hand on the back of his chair. “Why not ask for the moon, Monsieur le
Marquis?” she said at last.

“I do not admit the suitability of the metaphor,” retorted Gilbert,
controlling himself with difficulty. “I am asking for the life of a
friend of your own, Madame. Surely my request is not a very strange
one.”

“And what makes you think that M. de Saint-Ermay is a friend of mine?”
she asked at that. “You abound in strange suppositions, Monsieur.”

“Because I know my cousin rather well, Madame,” answered the Marquis.
“And since I have seen you——” he concluded, bowing.

“Merci, Monsieur!” cried the lady. “And because, as I am to understand,
Monsieur le Vicomte has done me the honour to admire me, I am to feel
that his blood is on my head?”

“If not responsibility, I should expect you to feel interest,”
retorted Gilbert sternly. “But if you have no concern for the boy, I
am only wasting your time and my own.” He made a movement as if to
take his leave.

Madame d’Espaze put out her hand. “Stay a moment, M. de Château-Foix.
I am not as insensible as you think to the fate of my friends. But you
must see that I cannot afford to sacrifice my party to my personal
friendships. You will say that politics is not a game for a woman—I am
sure that is one of your ideas—but since I have taken it up I must
play it. And these people are not friends; they only come here to pay
me compliments, and I have had my fill of those for more years than I
should care to acknowledge to you. Those are not the stakes for which
I play now. . . . I wonder why I am saying these things to you. . . .
You have come to the wrong person; it is nothing to me—not the snap of
a finger—if all these young fools pay the penalty of their folly.” She
was on her feet by now, walking rapidly about. “You have come to the
wrong person,” she reiterated.

“Madame, I do not think I have,” said Gilbert quietly.

Suddenly she turned on him. “You credit me, I suppose, with being
Louis’ mistress?”

“That is not a matter which concerns or interests me, Madame. I want
my cousin’s life, not an account of the way in which he spends it.”

The Comtesse stopped in her restless walk as if struck by a sudden
idea. “Then you do not know—you do not consider yourself his mentor?”

“Most certainly not.”

She looked at him with an interest which, undisguised as it was, held
something more concealed behind it.

“Have you seen much of him lately?—No, I know that you have not. Do
you know that he fought the Comte de Bercy the morning after you came
to Paris?”

“Yes,” said Gilbert, wondering whither this was tending, “I do know
it.”

“But do you know why?”

“No.”

“You are a singular person, M. de Château-Foix,” said his hostess
slowly. “If you will take my advice—but of course you will not—do not
try to find out!” She turned away again and said, after a moment’s
pause: “And now, if I cannot help you, what will you do?”

“Ah, no, Madame,” returned Gilbert, shaking his head with the glimmer
of a smile. “If you will not help me, I dare not reveal to you such
poor resources as I may have, independent of your aid.”

“In other words, I must be ally or enemy? You have no liking for
half-measures, I see, Monsieur le Marquis. . . . Well, no more have I.
And I am convinced, from what I have already seen, that I prefer you
when you smile to when you frown at me. So . . . let us be allies.
Will that satisfy you?”

“Madame——” began Gilbert, scarcely daring to believe her words,
accompanied by that brilliant and half-mocking smile.

Madame d’Espaze held up both her slim hands. “No thanks, Monsieur, I
beg. But instead of them, tell me, since you are so clear-sighted, how
I am to set about this business of Monsieur le Vicomte?”

And under her malicious gaze Château-Foix had the certain conviction
that she meant to see how he would avoid saying in so many words: “You
have but to ask your lover for his release.” He began a careful phrase
full of generalities about influence, but ere he had finished it she
seemed to have lost interest in the reply to her question, and he
stopped and looked at her, as she stood in the middle of the white and
gold room with her head bent and a hand to her cheek. It seemed to him
quite a long time that she stood thus, till she said reflectively:
“Yes, I think I can do it. It will not be easy, however. You shall
have an order of release to-day if I can possibly procure it. Do I
know where you are staying?”

The Marquis told her.

“There is one condition—one thing you must promise me—both for Louis’
sake and . . . that of others. Once he is out of prison he must leave
Paris immediately.”

It was the least that could be expected, and a condition that did not
displease Gilbert at all—or would not have done so two days ago. “I
promise it on my honour,” he said. “What can I do—what can I possibly
do—to show my gratitude?”

The Comtesse spread out her hands. “You can keep a better eye on your
scapegrace of a cousin,” she said lightly. “I make him over to
you. . . . Next time, too, that you are in Paris, my friend, come and
see me on your own account. You have just seen how amenable I am to
good influence.” She floated nearer to him, and gave him her hand,
bare of rings and incredibly small and white.

Gilbert raised it to his lips. “I shall be only too happy, Comtesse.
There is no means by which I can thank you sufficiently.”

“You have only yourself to thank, M. de Château-Foix, for I assure you
that I have not that good heart to which I have been afraid you would
refer. Yet if it is any consolation to you, Marquis, reflect that, in
this changing world, I may some day be needing help from you. . . .
But that is not why I am your ally now.” She smiled at him charmingly.

                             CHAPTER XV

                    HAPPY REUNION OF TWO KINSMEN

     “Come through, come through, Lieutenant Gordon
         Come through and drink some wine wi’ me!
      For yesterday I was your prisoner,
         But now the night I am set free.”
                                                —_Archie o’ Cawfield_.

The long day of suspense was closing into evening before Gilbert,
consumed with anxiety at the Hôtel des Etats-Généraux, knew that
Madame d’Espaze had not belied her word. From the packet which was
brought to him about nine o’clock fell out a scented note.

“Take the accompanying order and present it at La Force without
loss of time. It will do all you wish.—C. D’E.”

Dismissing at the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, for prudence sake, the
fiacre which had brought him so far, Château-Foix hurried thence
eastwards on foot. His head was in a whirl; he had not time to think
how he should greet his cousin, and was glad of it, but threaded his
way quickly through the animation of the Rue Saint-Antoine, till he
saw on his left the opening of the little Rue des Ballets. Narrow,
roughly paved, sloping down to a central gutter with its trickling
stream, it ran its thirty paces up to the sombre facade of the Hôtel
de la Force. And Gilbert went towards the prison in the July dusk,
with no premonition of the September afternoon when the gutter over
which he strode should run with a darker stream, and the narrow door
which faced him open to let out, into the brief hell of axes and
laughter, victim after victim. . . . His thoughts were all of Louis,
of Louis immured in that dark mass which rose, its high roof pierced
with tiny dormer windows, behind the lower range of the entrance. The
sight of La Force and all that it stood for had exorcised for the
moment any feelings of his own. He cast a hasty glance to his left,
where the building ran along the Rue du Roi de Sicile—lately
rebaptized as the Rue des Droits de l’Homme—and accosted the sentry
in his box by the door.

Some parley with this individual resulted in his being admitted, and,
following a jailor through two successive _guichets_, he found himself
in the bureau of the prison. Months afterwards he realised that this
place must have been the summary tribunal chamber of so many agonies.
Bault, the _concierge_, was fetched from his supper, registers were
brought out and searched, the order of release was entered, not
without comment, and, as far as formalities were concerned, Louis was
a free man again. The _concierge_, at heart not ill-natured, and
further softened by the hundred livres which the Marquis had just
slipped into his hand, remarked that it would be as well to let the
prisoner out by the little door giving into the Rue des Droits de
l’Homme, and not by the chief entrance, whence he might possibly be
espied by passers in the Rue Saint Antoine. An aristocrat leaving La
Force might chance to be a displeasing sight to the good patriots of
the Faubourg, and from what he, Bault, remembered of the citizen
Saint-Ermay, there was no disguising the fact that he was an
aristocrat.

Gilbert thanked him, and, since he should not return that way, was
allowed to follow the _guichetier_ instead of remaining where he was,
as he had expected do. His guide crossed a small courtyard, went
through yet a third _guichet_, emerged into a larger court, and
turning, ascended a staircase.

“Number 32,” he repeated to himself, and they went down a dirty
ill-lit corridor, with rows of doors either side. But, to Gilbert’s
astonishment, the door of 32, when they reached it, stood ajar,
affording him a glimpse of the narrow abode for which his kinsman had
exchanged his own apartments. A horrible thought suddenly visited him
that they had been fooling him at the bureau, that Louis had already
been transferred, tried, murdered, he knew not what. . . .

“Where is he?” he demanded harshly.

The jailor, turning on his heel, responded with an oath, and began to
retrace his steps, asseverating that if he had known he was coming all
this —— way for nothing after a —— _aristo_, some one else could have
had the job. However, he seemed to have an objective in view, and
Gilbert followed him mutely downstairs again. Half-way along a
corridor he stopped, motioned to the Marquis to stay where he was, and
disappeared round a corner.

He seemed to be gone long. The lamp above Gilbert’s head stank
villainously; the horrible oppression of the place entered his soul
and joined forces with the oppression already seated there. Echoing
steps came nearer, and Louis, with his head held high, walked down the
corridor, alone.

He was on the Marquis before he saw who it was. “Good God! not you as
well!” he exclaimed, stopping short with a catch of the breath.

The sound of the familiar, careless voice, pierced with an unfamiliar
note of apprehension, swept everything else out of Gilbert’s mind.

“My dear boy—no!” he said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “No—you are
free! Did they not tell you?”

“Free!” exclaimed Louis, bewildered. “I thought—— But how the devil——”

The Marquis put a finger on his lips as the _guichetier_ came up,
swinging his keys.

“Little surprise for you, _ci-devant_, isn't it?” observed that
worthy. “I might have told you, hein? But I like my little joke. Come
on, then, since we are to part with you.”

A few moments more and they were standing in the dark, narrow street,
with the door swung to upon them and the sound of heavy bolts slipping
back into their places to bring home, if it were needed, the full
savour of release.

Louis drew a long breath, and turning without a word to Gilbert
embraced him. The Marquis released himself something hastily, and took
off his cloak. “Put this on,” he said hurriedly. “I must tell you that
you are now my valet. I have yet to get you out of Paris. There is a
suit of clothes in readiness for you at my hotel, to which you must
accompany me at once. Meanwhile, it is fortunately dark.” He swung the
heavy cloak over Louis’ slim figure. “Not a word now, I beg of you;
but follow me as quickly as you can.”

He started to walk rapidly along the Rue du Roi de Sicile, past the
prison front, towards the Rue de la Verrerie, and Louis, wrapped in
the cloak, followed obediently and still half dazed. At last, at the
corner of the Rue de la Verrerie and the Rue Saint Martin, Gilbert
hailed a passing fiacre, and they got in.

“Perhaps now I may thank you, or try to,” exclaimed the Vicomte as the
vehicle started. “My dear Gilbert, has any one ever relied on you in
vain? Though, indeed, I was not relying much on you or on anybody.” He
slipped his arm into his cousin’s.

The conflicts through which Château-Foix had passed had clothed his
spirit—for the time being, at least—in a sort of exhaustion. He did
not return the pressure, but he smiled—a little wearily—and said: “You
have small need to thank me. You owe your release to—an enemy.”

Louis appeared to reflect rapidly. “It’s no use—I have too many.”

“It was Madame d’Espaze.”

“The devil!” exclaimed the Vicomte. He seemed genuinely surprised. “I
should never have dreamt of such a thing. But you must have asked
her?”

“I did.”

Louis was evidently at a loss for an expression of his feelings. “You
are amazing, Gilbert!” he said at last. “Did you actually interview
her?”

The Marquis nodded.

“I didn’t think she cared enough,” said her admirer thoughtfully. “I
suppose you worked on her feelings? Heavens, what a scene! So I owe my
release to Célie—and to you. One must not forget the amiable Lecorrier
too; I presume she got the order through him.”

“Probably,” returned Château-Foix drily. “I did not enquire as to the
means she proposed to adopt.”

Louis laughed. “They have their humorous side. You must give me a full
account some time. Parbleu, mon cher, but you must have been having
the deuce of a time these two days!”

“And yourself?” asked Gilbert.

The Vicomte gave a shrug. “My only consolation was that the accommodation
in the next world would be better. One has always understood that it
is exceptionally good there. The company I would not have wished to
change. Is this the Place des Victoires already?”

At the hotel a sleepy servant, in response to enquiry, informed
Château-Foix that a bed had been prepared for Monsieur’s new valet in
the little dressing-room leading out of his own apartment, and within
a few minutes the Vicomte stood, candle in hand, looking down at the
sober grey suit which his cousin was placing on his pallet bed. The
cloak, half slipping off his shoulders, displayed the elegance which
he must discard for it.

“I hope these will fit,” said the Marquis. “They are quite new; I
got them this afternoon. What is to be done, I wonder, with the
compromising clothes you have on?”

Louis suddenly put down the candle, and impulsively, half laughing,
half touched, laid his hands on Gilbert’s shoulders from behind. “My
dear Gilbert, I don't deserve all this trouble!”

“Don’t you?” asked the Marquis in an odd tone, turning round and
facing his kinsman. “Don’t you? Why not?”

“Well,” returned Louis, “let us admit that I am worth some trouble,
but not worth running risks for. And I am sure you have run, and will
be running, risks for me.”

Château-Foix shrugged his shoulders. “Not if you will do as I ask,” he
responded rather coldly. “Let me tell you what that is. To-morrow
morning about noon we start for Chantemerle; we will post, and ought
to get to Dreux the same night. I am proposing to take rather a
circuitous route, for safety’s sake. I have got a passport for you as
my valet, in the name of Pierre Jourdain. All I ask is that you shall
play the part as well as you can, for both our sakes.”

“But,” broke in Louis, “I would rather stay in Paris. Why—they are all
taken, I suppose, D’Aubeville, Périgny, and the rest—and one might
try——”

“I am sorry,” said his cousin, “but in the matter you have no choice.
I gave my word that you should go at once; it was a condition of your
release. The rest, I fear, must pay the penalty—but, by the way, M.
d’Aubeville had not been arrested yesterday evening, for it was he who
advised me to go to Madame d’Espaze.”

The light died out of the Vicomte’s face as he listened to this
pronouncement, and he sat down rather gloomily on the bed and said
nothing. The Marquis looked at him for a moment as he stared at the
floor, with his hands in his pockets.

“Well, go to bed now,” he said, more kindly. “You can’t help yourself,
Louis—and who knows what there may be to do in Poitou? Good-night.” He
went out and shut the door between the two rooms.

It had been a day of great tension and fatigue, following on a
sleepless night, and the moment that he was alone, Gilbert realised
how tired he was—too tired (as he half thankfully realised) to look
his haunting idea in the face again at present. Undressing rapidly,
he threw himself into bed. Scarcely had he blown out his light before
there was a rap on the door between his room and his cousin’s, and
Louis, in his shirt and breeches, stood in the doorway. The light
behind him threw up his figure, but left his face untouched.

“I forgot to ask you,” he said, “about Lucienne. Is she going with
Madame Gaumont to-morrow as arranged?”

It is true that Gilbert then wished that he had not extinguished his
candle, but he was too proud to light it again for the purpose of
seeing the speaker’s face, and the voice told him nothing.

“Yes,” he answered. “She leaves Paris to-morrow about eleven.”

There was an infinitesimal pause.

“You told her, I suppose, that I could not escort her to England?”

“Yes,” said the Marquis, and then a mad idea rushed into his mind.
He raised himself on his elbow. “Am I to understand that you are
reconsidering your decision—that you wish to take her—now?” His heart
thumped absurdly on his ribs as he waited for the answer—absurdly,
because he had no intention of allowing Louis to do so, but the
question was a test.

Did Louis mutter something between his teeth? Aloud he only said:
“Certainly not. What made you think so? I merely wanted to know if
she were going. Good-night.”

                             CHAPTER XVI

                              FAREWELL

     “If we must part,
         Then let it be like this;
      Not heart on heart,
         Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss;
      But touch my hand and say:
      ‘Until to-morrow or some other day,
         If we must part.’”
                                      —ERNEST DOWSON, _A Valediction_.

Lucienne lay long in the deep sleep which Madame Gaumont’s
swiftly-administered potion had produced. They had carried her into
her bedroom, and Madame Gaumont had determined to wait for the time
when her charge should wake up. Lucienne’s bed was in shadow, but in
the far corner of the room there was a bright patch from a shaded
lamp, beside which sat the widow knitting. And because of the click
of her needles Lucienne dreamt that she was a child again, under the
guardianship of her old nurse, until, startled by some distant sound
into completer consciousness, she opened her eyes and, with a little
cry of disappointment, raised herself in bed.

In a moment the ample figure of Madame Gaumont was bending over her,
and before she could ask a question a wine-glass, steadied by Madame
Gaumont’s hand, was at her lips, and she was forced to drink its
contents to the last drop.

“There, my love,” said her hostess, “you’ll soon be well again now,
and you mustn’t talk, but just go off to sleep again, and if you want
anything, you’ve only to call, and I shall hear.”

Lucienne fixed her eyes on the shrewd, kind face, and lay down
obediently. She knew where she was now, and although it all seemed
very odd, she was too sleepy to ask any questions. If it were not her
nurse it was a very good substitute. To the music of the needles she
floated back to the shore of dreams.

Madame Gaumont, returned to her knitting, had an uneasy feeling that
all was not well with the girl. It seemed to her that perhaps there
was some other trouble in addition even to the natural grief at
parting with her lover and with Madame Elisabeth. “Poor child, poor
little soul!” she said to herself; “with no mother, and Monsieur
le Marquis, so good, so splendid, no doubt, but perhaps a little
overwhelming.” Well, well, she should not lack for creature comforts,
for the feeding up of the body went, in Madame Gaumont’s opinion, a
long way towards bringing peace to the mind.

But presently the quiet sleep came to an end. Lucienne tossed from
side to side, and began to break out into the most pitiful sobbing.
Madame Gaumont rose and went over to the bed again. The girl lay with
her head deep in the pillows, crying with the unrestrained abandonment
of a child, and at intervals whispering a name which the good lady
could not catch. For a moment or two the latter stood irresolute, and
then began to shake the weeper by the shoulder. “There, there, my
pretty one,” she said, “you’ve had a bad dream. You must not cry like
that, or we shall never be able to let you see Monsieur le Marquis
to-morrow.”

This statement was not without its effect. Lucienne instantly sat up.
“I don’t want to see him,” she wailed. “You must tell him I'm ill—tell
him anything—only do not let him come near me. . . . But find out from
him about Louis. I must know—I shall go mad if I don’t! You will find
out . . . promise me!”

“Yes, yes, love, I promise you; only lie down now and try to keep
quiet,” responded Madame Gaumont, whose mind had just come to several
sudden conclusions. She busied herself round the bed, shaking the
pillow and smoothing the tumbled bedclothes, and Lucienne lay back and
watched her, and seemed content to listen to her prattle. And before
long she slept again, and slept quietly, till she woke with a start to
find the room full of summer sunlight, and her kind watcher gone.

Almost with the first movement of consciousness her mind made that
painful mental effort to reproduce in the morning the vague something
which has happened before the period of oblivion. First there came
faint images of the night—of Madame Gaumont and a shaded lamp, of
restless tossings and bad dreams, and then suddenly a mental picture
which eclipsed all others, and a familiar voice sounding in her
ears—“I had not meant to tell you, but perhaps you had better know.”

She stretched herself to her full length under the bedclothes, her
whole body tingling at the recollection, and buried her burning cheeks
in the pillows. With eyes tightly shut as if she were unwilling for
outward objects to break the trance of misery, she recalled every
detail of Gilbert’s visit. Shame, and something like anger at her own
stupidity, came over her, for now he must know, he must guess their
secret. Not even Gilbert could think that she cared like that for his
cousin. But the torturing anxiety for Louis came to banish her own
confusion. If only he were safe, nothing mattered; the world might
think what it liked. It was only Louis, Louis that she wanted! Why had
she not taken him, when she might have called him to herself through
all these months? Because it was against honour and right; and what
were honour and right set against love and longing such as this?
She had deceived herself; she had listened to Madame Elisabeth,
and thought that she too could rise to heights of devotion and
sacrifice. . . . Oh, it was mockery! She wanted no favours from the
cold heaven of the saints! To feel Louis’ arms round her and his
kisses on her hair, that were worth an age-long purgatory. But the
gates of love had opened, and closed again for ever, as she believed,
and a great darkness came down upon her soul.

         *         *         *         *         *         *

It was no doubt fortunate for Lucienne that the whole of that day was
spent in the most engrossing preparations for departure—the final
depositing of articles in chests, the final shrouding up of furniture.
Dear to the heart of Madame Gaumont were such doings, and little did
she intend to find, when she returned from her English visit, that her
property had suffered by her absence. Although she would not allow
Lucienne to lift a finger, and kept her in bed most of the day, the
salutary sense of bustle pervading the house did something to distract
the girl’s mind. Lucienne had another distraction also. In the morning
she had said that she could not see M. de Château-Foix when he came;
by the evening she was in a fever to know why he had not come. Was it
because he had guessed her secret, or because he was somehow engaged
in Louis’ affairs? The night of July 4th fell and she was no wiser,
but filled with surmises each more agonising than the other.

She rose on the morning of the start pale and heavy-eyed. Madame
Gaumont repressed with difficulty the exclamation of dismay which
trembled on her lips, when Lucienne appeared in her hostess’s boudoir
about ten o’clock. Had she not guessed that there was something very
much wrong she would have given vent to it.

“Does Justine want any help, my dear, or has she quite finished your
trunk? I declare,” pursued the good lady, “if she has not left out my
second-best silk!”

As the injured mistress rang for the erring maid Lucienne sank down
into a big chair. “How long before we leave the house, Madame?” she
asked listlessly.

“More than three-quarters of an hour, love, so you need not put
on your cloak yet. Remember to take your smelling salts in your
reticule, my dear. Some persons find them beneficial during the sea
passage.—What is it, Henri?”

“M. de Château-Foix’ valet, Madame,” said the man. “He has come with a
message for Mademoiselle from his master, and begs that Madame will
permit him to give it in person.”

Madame Gaumont gave a sigh of relief. But, not knowing of what
disconcerting news the messenger might be the bearer, she felt that
she must interview him first herself.

“I will come down immediately,” she said. “It is best that I should
see him first, my dear child,” she added, casting a glance on
Lucienne, into whose white cheeks had sprung a patch of red, and whose
hands were grasping the arms of her chair.

When she came back, panting a little from the ascent, Lucienne was
walking nervously up and down the room. She tried to read Madame
Gaumont’s face, and found it grave, for the good lady was not sure
that she was about to do right.

“There is nothing wrong, dear,” she said. “But Monsieur le Marquis has
sent a better messenger than his valet.”

“Louis—is it Louis?” gasped Lucienne.

“His cousin—M. de Saint-Ermay, I think he said his name was,” went on
Madame Gaumont, affecting not to notice the girl’s discomposure. “And
so, my dear, as he comes straight from Monsieur le Marquis, I think
you may go down and see him.—If I were a Frenchwoman I shouldn’t let
her,” she thought to herself.

“And M. de Château-Foix . . .?” faltered Lucienne.

“I understand that he is following shortly. Go, my child—unless you
would rather not.”

Meanwhile Louis stood in the middle of the dismantled salon. It struck
him as he waited that the room might be the bare boards of a stage,
for the suddenness with which he had been precipitated there had given
him something of the unreality of the player. Gilbert had told him how
he had promised Lucienne that she should see them both before his
departure, and they had been seated side by side in a fiacre on their
way from the Hôtel des Etats-Généraux to the Rue Vieille-du-Temple,
when the Marquis, who was even more silent than his wont, had pulled
out his passport to examine it, and had uttered an exclamation of
dismay.

“There has been some mistake,” he said, in answer to his cousin’s
query. “Here is a perfectly wrong description of you—it will never
pass.” And thrusting his head out of the window he called to the
driver to stop. “Go on and tell Lucienne that I will come as soon as I
can,” he said hastily. “I must go back and rectify this.” And before
Louis realised what had happened he was alone in the vehicle, driving
on by himself to bid Lucienne farewell.

The feeling of unreality did not wholly leave him when the door
opened, and Lucienne came slowly in, ghostlike in her pallor, her
quiet movements, and even in the way she looked at him, as over some
indefinable barrier.

He too went forward without saying a word, and catching her cold hands
pressed them to his lips.

“You are safe, Louis—you got out of prison?” said the low, shaken
voice.

“Gilbert got me out. I am sorry you ever knew I was in. You are not
fit to stand—come, let me put you into this chair, though it doesn’t
look very comfortable.”

She suffered him to put her into one of the swathed chairs, and asked
faintly: “Why have you come?”

“Gilbert sent me on,” said Louis, looking down at her. “He had some
business to see to at the last moment—something wrong with the
passport—but he is following.”

She said nothing, and after a moment he knelt down beside her.

“This is good-bye, Lucienne.” Whether her evident state of stupor
steadied him or no he could not have told, but after a long look at
her passionless white face and down-dropped lids he took one of her
hands, kissed it gently, and got to his feet again. All the way from
the Rue des Petits-Pères the violins of passion had played in his
breast little sad airs of farewell, to which he could listen without
danger. And in this ghostlike room, with Lucienne who looked like a
ghost, who spoke like a ghost, with his kiss on her cold unclinging
fingers, it was not so hard then to act like a gentleman, and after
last night there could be no question of doing anything else.

“At what time are you leaving the house?” he asked at last; not caring
for an answer, since he knew it, but in order to break a silence which
was becoming charged with something too potent for safety.

Nor did Lucienne give the answer. She lifted her eyes, and what the
young man saw in them sent all the gentle minor airs crashing into
discords, overridden by a deeper, insistent, triumphal note. . . .
Involuntarily he went a step nearer. . . .

And then—to that music she was in his arms, clinging, sobbing,
entreating. “Louis, you shall not go—you shall not, you shall not!
It has been a horrible mistake. . . . I have tried—I promised the
Princess—but I can’t, I can’t, Louis . . . it’s impossible!”

The heart against which she lay beat furiously, all its hot young
blood vibrating to her words. The ghostlike room went dim; she alone
was real—too real, overpoweringly human and appealing. And everything
pleaded for her—the scent of her hair, Saint-Ermay’s own temperament,
his past of facile conquests. . . . Probably only one thing could have
saved him; it was on his side now.

“Lucienne,” he said in a strangled voice, “it is impossible. I cannot
be such a hound, though God knows I would like to be. Let me go, dear.
It is impossible.” And he tried, very gently, with hands that shook a
little, to unclasp her twining fingers.

But Lucienne had the tenacity of many impressionable natures, and too
little experience to know that there is often more fighting to do
after victory than before it. Her victory had been won six months ago;
but to-day, after all, she had flung herself into the embrace which
then she had repulsed. Unstrung, in bitter revolt against fate and the
part she had herself taken in moulding that fate, conscious only of
her passionate desire for happiness—conscious, too, that the lover of
to-day was not the almost suppliant of that January afternoon—she
snatched up arms for a new and a different combat. The force of her
love and misery rushed against Saint-Ermay like the tide, and tossing
on that impetuous sea like wrack and seaweed went all maidenly reserve
and pride.

“Louis, Louis,” she kept repeating over and over again, like a child,
and strained him the closer, “I can’t live without you . . . I have
tried, but I can’t. . . . I can’t go to England! Oh, why do you say
that it is impossible?”

The sight of her beautiful, agonised face, so near his own, made
Louis’ head whirl. “Because,” he said hoarsely, looking away, “I owe
Gilbert my life, and I can’t do it. Let me go, my darling; it has to
be.”

Even with the music of passion in his ears he was conscious of his
delicate and ironical situation. It was impossible to avoid the
thought that his cousin might at that very moment be coming up the
stairs. Nothing but dire catastrophe for all three of them could
result if it were so. But he could not bring himself to say it. As he
hesitated Lucienne herself loosed her arms from about him.

“Then you do not love me, after all! . . . No, no, Louis—I did
not mean it. . . . Do not look like that. . . . I did not mean
it. . . . It is God who is against us!” Her voice sank. “If he saved
your life——” Turning away she hid her face in her hands and broke into
fresh weeping.

And—strange perversity—the moment that she saw the thing as he did,
and acknowledged the inevitable, Louis would have given everything he
possessed to have her in his arms again. There surged over him a mad
desire to dare that inevitable, to defy Gilbert, to claim her, cost
what it might. Should he do it? Her sobs, the line of her neck, her
shaken body wrung his heart. . . . He could give Gilbert his life if
he demanded it. . . .

And there stole into his mind the last recollection that he wished
to have at such a moment, the last that he could imagine would be
conjured up. For once before he had staked his life for a woman; and
had been, too, within an ace of paying it: once before he had felt,
with fire in his veins, that a stake so supreme ennobled the cause
for which it was ventured. And had it ennobled what followed? No! a
thousand times no, and Lucienne was degraded by the parallel. He
trampled down the wild impulse.

“Lucienne,” he said unsteadily, “don't cry so—I can’t bear it.
I . . . Say good-bye and let me go!”

Still sobbing, and with her face hidden by one hand, she put out the
other to him blindly. He did not dare to trust himself at that moment
to take it, and it fell like a wounded bird to her side, so that they
stood by each other in the big empty room without speaking, she
weeping, and he, with his hands clenched, looking at her in torture
and impotence. Perhaps it was the fact that her hand had not been
taken which enabled Lucienne a little to command herself. And when her
tear-blinded eyes rested on her lover, standing so near, but with so
white and rigid a face, she recognised the futility of rebelling any
more. It seemed to her that all her youth went from her in that
moment, and that she was suddenly very old, very prudent, and did not
care for anything very much, like the old Marquise de la Ferronière,
her grandmother, who spent her days in a convent but was not a nun. So
she sank down in the chair behind her, and, shutting her eyes, leant
her head against the back, the better to taste this wisdom and
detachment, and the sooner to forget Louis, whom henceforth she must
never remember.

Saint-Ermay bent hastily over her with an exclamation. She opened her
eyes.

“Say good-bye quickly. . . .”

“I thought you had fainted!”

“No,” said Lucienne, “I hardly ever——” She stopped, and a shiver
of reminiscence ran through her. Ought she to tell him? But the
remembrance was horrible and shameful; she could not.

Louis saw that something was troubling her.

“Does it matter?” he asked tenderly, kneeling down once more beside
her. “There is only one thing that matters to me, Lucienne, and that
is that I shall love you as long as I live. . . . But perhaps you had
best forget that. . . . Good-bye, my darling.”

The passionate kisses which he set on her hand woke on the instant in
Lucienne that youth which she had felt slip from her—woke it to a last
desperate revolt.

“No . . . no, Louis,” she gasped in agony. “Not yet . . . a little
longer. . . . It is too cruel. . . .”

And for a moment longer his head remained bowed on her hand, while she
looked down at it to imprint for ever in her mind all that she could
see of him, till she felt that she could remember to eternity every
rippling strand of his dark-brown hair, the dull black ribbon that
tied it, the tiny curl by his ear, and the strong, delicate hand,
emerging from the coarse and ruffleless sleeve, that had clenched
itself on the other arm of the chair. But before she had made an end
of gazing he got up from his knees, and, without a word, without a
backward look, walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

                            CHAPTER XVII

                      COMEDY OF A BURNT LETTER

When Gilbert stood a moment in the street watching the fiacre bearing
Louis rapidly away from him, his first feeling was one of violent and
unrestrained anger against the impulse which had placed him there. But
there was no time to indulge in this emotion. Why the devil, he asked
himself, had he not, on his discovery, told the driver to drive
straight to the Mairie? Cursing himself, he hailed another fiacre, and
set off at a tearing pace in that direction. Fortunately the mistake
was soon rectified, and he found himself before long in the courtyard
of the Hôtel de la Séguinière. Here a great bustle was in progress.
The post-chaise was, rather to Gilbert’s surprise, already there. It
would have been quite simple, under the circumstances, to walk in
unannounced, but because it might have looked as if he intended spying
on his cousin, Château-Foix would not do it. He was therefore preceded
up the staircase by a flurried domestic.

At the top of the first flight he came on Louis, standing with his
back to a door, and having very much the appearance of supporting
himself by the lintel. The light was not good, but no great amount of
illumination was required to emphasise the fact that he was extremely
pale. He moved aside at once.

“I began to wonder if you were coming,” he said very quietly.
“Lucienne is in here waiting for you. I am afraid that you will find
her rather distressed.”

Gilbert looked him full in the face. “I expected as much,” he said,
equally quietly, and went in.

As for Louis, he went slowly away to the far end of the landing, and
sitting down on a couch in the corner buried his face in his hands. He
had not, however, remained more than a minute or two in this posture
when he sprang hastily up. Madame Gaumont was rustling down the
staircase from the floor above.

“Is that you, Monsieur le Vicomte? Is Monsieur le Marquis here? Such a
to-do; we must start at once. There was a mistake about the tide, and
we shall not catch the packet unless we go immediately. Is Monsieur le
Marquis with Mademoiselle? I don’t like to burst in on them. Will you
go?”

“I, Madame!” exclaimed Louis with a bitter little laugh. “God forbid!”

Even in her hurry Madame Gaumont looked at him curiously for a
second, and seemed about to say something unconnected with travelling
arrangements. Then she thought better of it, and entered the room.

The young man looked for a moment at the door which she had left
ajar behind her, then turned away, and began slowly to descend the
staircase. He would go back to the hotel and wait there for Gilbert.
Yet he went so slowly down the stairs, he paused so long at the door,
and traversed the courtyard with so lagging a step, that by the time
he had reached the gateway a little commotion behind him warned him
that the travellers were already starting. Turning, he saw on the
steps Madame Gaumont and her maid, and on Gilbert’s arm Lucienne, a
hastily but heavily veiled figure; and, as if fascinated, he watched
Gilbert helping in the three women. The postilion scrambled to his
place, and in another moment the post-chaise came rumbling towards him
over the stones. . . . It was gone—passing him as he stood like a
statue in the archway, fighting down a wild desire to spring to the
horses’ heads and stop it. And Lucienne had not seen him; perhaps it
was as well. . . .

Gilbert came across the courtyard, pulling out his watch. “We must get
back at once,” he said briefly, and Louis followed him without a word.
It suited him well enough that his supposed status required him to
walk behind.

Hardly had they got into the yard of the Etats-Généraux when hurrying
footsteps were heard behind them, and looking round they both
recognised one of Madame Gaumont’s domestics. He held a letter in his
hand.

“For you, Sir,” he said, giving it to the Marquis. “It has just been
found in Mademoiselle d’Aucourt’s room—in the grate. Thinking it had
fallen into the fire by mistake, and seeing that it was addressed to
you, I thought it best to bring it on at once.”

“You did quite right,” said Gilbert, giving him a louis. “Pierre, see
that the baggage is ready. We start in a quarter of an hour.” And he
went in, while Saint-Ermay stared after him, wondering what on earth
could be the meaning of this belated missive from Lucienne. It seemed
almost like a message from the dead.

To Gilbert also the letter had something of that complexion, as,
without opening it, he mounted the stairs to his room. For Lucienne,
when he had entered, was not in a condition for a coherent farewell.
He had found her bowed over the arm of the big chair in which she sat,
weeping her heart out, he would have thought, except that the tears
were few. She seemed to have exhausted them. Château-Foix was almost
frightened. But his mind had been made up before ever he opened the
door. She should have from him neither questions nor reproaches. The
fault was not hers; he could not bear that she should have to justify
herself. So he had merely raised her up and kissed her wet cheek; then
Madame Gaumont had come in, and there was an end.

At last he broke open the letter. It was so short that a second or two
sufficed for his eyes to run over the words whose meaning his mind
took much longer to grasp.

“I cannot bear it. I cannot go to England. Come to me and tell me
that we can be married at once, and that you will take me back with
you.—LUCIENNE.”

That was all, but at these few lines Gilbert stood staring, stunned.
After a moment he sat dizzily down, and resting his elbow on the table
put his hand over his eyes the better to taste this enormous, this
overwhelming surprise. He was too dumbfounded for consecutive
reflection, but the first thought which penetrated his stupor was one
of such radiant and piercing joy that his reason seemed to shake
beneath its onslaught. The nightmare was but a nightmare after all.
“Thank God! thank God!” he cried with his deepest soul. It was all
false. The proof had come to him here in this very room which had
witnessed his black night of despair; this was the very table on which
he had bowed his head, those were the same chimes of Notre Dame des
Victoires floating, now, through the sunlight. . . .

And she had gone; he could not thank her for this great proof of her
love; for at first he saw it in that aspect, judging the trust and
confidence which must have prompted her to so unusual a step. The
trust and confidence; yes, and what must she not have suffered when
the next evening he had visited her and said no word of her appeal?
He looked again at the date: he was not mistaken; the letter had
been written on the evening of the day when she had exchanged the
guardianship of the Princess for that of Madame Gaumont. Poor child!
how horribly she must have suffered! His stirred feelings lent him
enough imagination to put himself in her place. Was it any wonder that
she had seemed strange, and that overcome by the strain she had
fainted at the additional shock given, very naturally, by the news of
Louis’ arrest? What must she have thought of him? What, too, if she
had known his unworthy, his vile suspicions of her? How large a part
had his involuntary silence not played in the state in which he had
just found her?

And she was gone, thinking—what? He walked for a minute or two
in agitation up and down the room, until going back to the table
he picked up the little note, so pathetic in its need and its
trustfulness. An idea that was half a hope flashed upon him. That
blackened, scorched corner meant one of two things: either the letter
had fallen into the fire by mischance, Lucienne being left in the
impression that she had sent it, or she had intended to burn it. It
had in that case been but the outcry of her distress, destroyed
because it had seemed to her unmaidenly. And he devoutly hoped that
this was the case, because it left him all the perfume of the message
and relieved her of the dreadful tension of waiting for an answer
which he had never given.

Since he had looked down at her in his interrupted leave-taking, since
he had given her that kiss, whose remembered coldness filled him with
the most burning indignation against himself, not half an hour had
elapsed. And he had let her go thus—for ever, perhaps—and could not
follow her. But he could write to her. He would write here and now. He
looked round impulsively for ink and paper—and then remembered, with a
checking of his ardour, that he could scarcely with delicacy reveal to
her his knowledge of her letter if, as he hoped, she had meant to burn
it.

Footsteps, too, were approaching his door. “Yes; I am coming,” he
shouted, guessing that he was being summoned, that the post-chaise was
waiting. But he lingered a moment, looking with eyes not quite clear
at the little scorched letter ere, kissing it, he thrust it into his
breast, and left the room which had seen him go down into hell and
come forth again.

                            CHAPTER XVIII

                         THE ROAD TO POITOU

When the light, two-wheeled post-chaise, with its pair of horses and
its postilion, was rolling at last along the sunlit quays, Gilbert
forced himself to turn his thoughts from the joy and relief in his own
breast to the contemplation of a matter for the moment more urgent—the
safe conveyance of his cousin from Paris. He glanced at his kinsman,
seated beside him in his unfamiliar dark clothes, and observed with a
sort of amused despair that he did not seem to consider that prudence
required him to refrain from showing his face at the window, for he
had been looking out in silence ever since they started.

“One would think, my dear Louis,” observed the Marquis at length,
“that you had never seen Paris before. Your evident wish to remain
here may soon, perhaps, be gratified.”

“There’s a most extraordinarily pretty woman just going towards the
Allée des Princes,” murmured Louis.—“I beg your pardon, Gilbert. You
were saying that we shan’t get through. Well, if we don’t I shall have
still less faith in any of the La Rochefoucauld. Wasn’t it Liancourt
who helped you to your passport? I suppose that if we have to get out
at the barrier, I must hold the door open for you. And you must curse
me for a clumsy fool. Oh, I forgot! you never swear at your servants.
By the way, have I a name? I’ve forgotten it, at any rate.”

The Marquis handed him in silence the passport, with its emblematic
figures supporting a shield, inscribed with the device, “Vivre libre
ou mourir”—Minerva bearing the cap of liberty on a pike, and a female
typifying the French constitution, seated on a lion. The crown which
the latter held over the shield had been struck through with a pen,
and the same fate had overtaken the crown surmounting the arms of
France which accompanied the mayoral seal in red wax at the bottom.
Louis’s lip curled as he observed it. “L’an 4 de la liberté,” he
muttered scornfully, running his eye up to the date over Pétion’s
signature, and passed on to peruse his own description.

“I don’t know what the original portrait was like,” he remarked,
returning the document, “but I don’t call this amended version very
flattering. I suppose it was jealousy which led you to dock me of an
inch of my height. However, Pierre Jourdain has a very convincing
sound for a valet.”

When the chaise drew up with a jerk at the Barrière de Versailles it
was possibly on account of the hot July sun that no great alacrity
was displayed in demanding credentials. A sleepy-looking official,
followed by a couple of National Guards, did at last present himself
at the left-hand window—Saint-Ermay’s—and to him the Marquis handed
out the passport, throwing a severe glance at Louis, who seemed to be
struggling with a most inopportune desire to laugh. The man read it
yawning, asked a few questions, signed the paper, returned it, and,
suddenly pulling himself together, shut the chaise door with a bang,
and magnificently waved a dirty hand to the postilion. The horses
sprang forward, the gateway slid past—they were out of Paris.

“Why are you travelling under your own name?” asked the Vicomte
abruptly, breaking a silence which was not uneloquent of tension past.

“Why not?” retorted Gilbert. “You observe that there is no title.
Moreover, I once met Terrier de Monciel before he was Minister of the
Interior, and though, as it happened, he did not recognise me when I
went to have the passport countersigned, I thought that the fewer lies
I told him the better.”

“Especially as we shall probably want quite a new stock later on. I
wonder,” observed Louis thoughtfully, looking at the strongly-cut
profile beside him, “what you could best pass yourself off as at a
pinch.”

“Occupy your wits, then, with the question,” said Château-Foix,
folding up the passport. “If you can hope to become yourself something
other than the most hot-headed young fool in the universe, your
reflections will not be wasted.” He gave Louis one of his rare smiles
as he spoke. Lucienne’s letter met his fingers as he replaced the
passport. God! what a cloud was rolled away in the last hour! To him,
who was never troubled with excess of spirits, his heart seemed
preposterously light—though all the while, deep down, throbbed a
remorse which would not easily leave him. The sunshine and the blue
sky—even the cheerful trot of the horses—were one with his rejoicing.
They were safely out of Paris; Louis was rescued—was sitting here at
his side, and once more it was good to have him there. The old feeling
of affection came back with a force all the stronger for its temporary
suspension, and he turned a little and put a hand on his cousin’s arm.

“I wonder what I should have done if I could not have got you out of
La Force!” he said.

         *         *         *         *         *         *

After Versailles Louis gradually ceased from converse, and, alleging
that he was sleepy, settled himself in the corner of the chaise and
closed his eyes. Gilbert, glancing once or twice at him, was struck
with the way in which his face in repose had lost its life and gaiety,
and attributed the extinction, with compassion, to regret for lost
comrades and a ruined cause. For himself, he was composing in his mind
an answer to Lucienne’s letter all the way from Saint Cyr to Trappes.

The miles sped on uneventfully, but for the change of horses every two
leagues. At Houdan, however, there was a long delay, caused by want of
these animals, and it was dark when they got to Dreux.

“I don’t know any of the inns,” said Gilbert. “Tell the postilion to
go to a moderate-priced one; that will probably be safest.”

Louis transmitted the order, and, remembering his part, got out when
the chaise drew up in the courtyard of the Grand-Cerf and held the
door open for his supposed master. But he forgot the baggage, and had
to be sent back for it.

“I feel very uneasy about you,” observed the Marquis, as Saint-Ermay
deposited a valise on the floor of Gilbert’s room. “I know that you
will never be able to keep up this servant role.”

“Shall I not?” asked Louis, with a certain boyish enjoyment. “You will
see, Monsieur le Marquis. I shall soon be asking for higher wages,
especially if your valise gets any heavier. Are we going to have
anything to eat?”

“I shall have some supper served up here,” said Gilbert, looking
worried. “But will it not seem strange if you have yours with me?”

“Very,” said the Vicomte, who was evidently pining to play his part
elsewhere. “I must have mine downstairs. Am I to engage myself a
room?”

“I would rather have you on a truckle-bed in here,” returned his
kinsman apprehensively. “Ask them if they have one.”

“All right,” said Louis cheerfully. “I’ll say that you are subject to
fits, or melancholia, or walk in your sleep. Au revoir!”

He went out, and did not reappear for so long that the Marquis, after
his supper, rang and asked for his valet, only to be told that he had
gone out some time ago, and that there were some strolling players in
the town, whose performance he was no doubt witnessing. When he at
last came back Château-Foix fell upon him.

“For God’s sake, Louis, don’t treat this affair as a jest. You ought
never to have left the inn——”

“And have people suggesting that we have a reason for lying low?
That’s not my idea of prudent conduct,” retorted his cousin,
unabashed. “I have been witnessing that noble play, _Le Patriotisme
recompensé, ou l’Arrivée à Paris des Sauveurs de la Patrie_—in fact, I
am not sure that after heartily applauding the artist who acted Drouet
I did not join in the _Ça ira_. It will be an inconceivable protection
to you, Gilbert, to have a valet of known Republican principles.”

“I dare say it might, if there were the slightest chance of your
remembering them,” said Gilbert gloomily. “Well, there’s no use
arguing with you. Let’s get to bed, for we must start early to-morrow.”

“I shall sleep across your door, like a feudal vassal,” announced the
Vicomte, dragging at the little bed. “This affair fills me with the
spirit of the faithful retainer. I am not sure that it doesn’t make me
feel grey-haired—grown old in your service, Monsieur le Marquis. . . .
For Heaven’s sake, don’t throw that pillow at me; just think if any
one could see in. . . . But I said you were subject to fits.”

“I forbid you to speak another word, then, Pierre,” said Château-Foix,
laughing. “I am going to get into bed and sleep.”

And he did both. But Louis, deprived of the safety-valve of talking
nonsense, lay miserably wide-awake in the darkness. Yet the high
spirits which he had displayed had not been wholly feigned; they were
not altogether summoned up at will to hide his heart from Gilbert’s
eyes. He was young enough to feel a measure of elation at having done
right at great cost, and there had been something too of reaction in
his vivacity. But now that there was no longer need to be gay it was
very different. Swept back, despite his struggles, into the room at
the Hôtel de la Séguinière, every phase of that intolerable parting
tortured him afresh. How she had clung to him—how she had besought
him! . . . it was as though he should always hear that anguished,
pleading voice. . . . He groaned, and flung himself over in the
truckle-bed. He must not, dared not, think of it. . . . Denied those
images his thoughts went off to others, guessed at; to her on her
road. What must she not be suffering now, alone, hourly drawing
further away! But he must not think of that either! . . . What was it
that she had been going to tell him, and had not?—and, tormenting
question, what had she written in the note which Gilbert had so
belatedly received? . . . What use to surmise; he had no right to
know! . . . So, desperately, he tried to cling to the idea of
Gilbert’s goodness to him; that he had come to Paris to warn him, that
he had saved him from almost certain death. And, tossed on this ocean
of pain, he fell asleep at last, to dream of his lost love, but not
with happy dreams.

         *         *         *         *         *         *

The Marquis had resolved to continue posting, and they traversed thus
the next morning the twenty-five miles or so to Verneuil. But Gilbert
soon began to regret his decision. The country seemed strongly
patriot; every village through which they passed had its tree of
liberty crowned with the red cap, and at Tillières some of the
inhabitants ran after the chaise, shouting out abuse of them as
aristocrats. By the time the old fortifications of Verneuil came in
sight Château-Foix had determined to abandon the post chaise for the
humble diligence.

“Of course, as a good Republican, I applaud you,” was Louis’
observation as they entered the town. “This country is certainly too
patriotic for comfortable methods of travelling. Even the saints are
_sans-culottes_—look at that.” And he pointed to a statue of Saint
Anne which adorned a porch of the Church of the Madeleine. A cap of
liberty perched on her stone coif.

“Yes; and I have noticed two or three wayside Calvaries with a
tricolour ribbon tied round the arm of the Christ,” said Gilbert.
“These are unmistakable signs, and I think we shall do well to observe
them.”

At the Hôtel du Saumon, Gilbert therefore paid the postboy and
dismissed him. The diligence for Mortagne, their next objective, did
not start for an hour or more, and it conveniently left the courtyard
of the Saumon itself. The Marquis ordered himself some déjeuner,
leaving Louis to procure himself a meal in the kitchen regions, and to
see to the baggage. A little before the time appointed he went out
into the big yard. The horses were already harnessed, but there was no
sign of Louis.

“I suppose you have my baggage on all right?” asked Gilbert of the
driver, for the two valises were as invisible as Saint-Ermay.

“Baggage?” echoed the man, a bullet-headed Norman. “I have no baggage
from here. There was none to put on.”

“Surely there were two valises out here,” Château-Foix, with a
premonition of disaster. “Where is my servant?—he was in charge of
them.”

The driver grinned. “Looking after another kind of baggage when I saw
him last,” he retorted. “That kind!” and he jerked his thumb at a
pretty chambermaid who at that moment ran across the yard.

“Pierre!” cried the Marquis angrily, “where are you?”

The sound of his voice caused the Vicomte to emerge, without undue
haste, from a doorway. “Is it time to start?” he asked nonchalantly,
and by no means in the tone of a servant addressing his master.

“What have you done with the baggage?” asked his cousin, frowning.
“Take your hands out of your pockets when you speak to me!”

Louis’ mouth twitched as he obeyed the hint.

“I told a man to put it on the diligence . . . Monsieur,” he answered
soberly. “Isn’t it there? Where has the man got to?” He went back into
the hotel, and returning after a moment’s absence beckoned Gilbert
aside. “The fool put it on the Nonancourt diligence, which went
three-quarters of an hour ago. They never said that there were two
diligences starting from here.”

“So that our baggage is now on its way back to Dreux?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m exceedingly sorry. What can we do?”

Gilbert shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing. We must go on without it.
Fortunately I have all my papers and money on me. Come along; they are
waiting for us.”

“Morbleu,” murmured Louis as he followed him, “you are horribly
magnanimous. I could support reproaches better. It was really very
careless of me.”

“You are new to your rôle—except, perhaps, to one part of it,”
returned his cousin impassively. “But remember not to address me as
an equal in public.”

Passing over to the driver, as lightly as he could, the fact that he
intended continuing his journey without his baggage, Gilbert mounted
into the diligence, which contained only a farmer and his wife and an
insignificant-looking man who was probably a small shopkeeper. But in
its progress through Verneuil the vehicle further gathered up, from
the door of a comfortable-looking house in a main street, a cheerful
little old man with apple cheeks and horn-rimmed spectacles, who
skipped in, bearing under one arm a large and rotund object done up in
newspaper. The two pretty girls who were seeing him off handed in to
him two cabbages of great size, a basket which might be presumed to
contain onions, and a bunch of flowers. These the old man, amid the
laughter of the girls and his own brisk apologies, bestowed beside
him. He waved his hand as the diligence lumbered off and then, pulling
a book from his pocket, was instantly immersed.

The shopkeeper got out at a village a mile or two from Verneuil,
the farmer and his wife at a wayside farm, and having nothing
better to do—for he dared not encourage Louis’ possibly unguarded
conversation—the Marquis fell to examining their fellow-passenger. In
spite of his horticultural impedimenta the latter had not in the least
the air of a farmer; the hand which held the book close to his
short-sighted eyes was thin and pale, though the nails and finger-tips
were a little discoloured; and the book itself, as Gilbert could
easily see, was the _Georgics_ of Virgil. Had not the road, after
crossing the Avre, become very bad his curiosity—such as it was—might
have remained unsatisfied, but a violent jolt suddenly causing one of
the cabbages to leap headlong to the floor, the Marquis, who sat
directly opposite, picked it up and returned it to its owner.

The old man hurriedly put down his book. “A thousand thanks, Citizen,”
he murmured, receiving it in careful hands. “You are too kind.” But he
was plainly more concerned with the fact that one of two of the
vegetable’s outer leaves were damaged than that a stranger had been at
the trouble of stooping for it, as, smoothing them as one might the
plumage of a bird, he restored it to its place. Hardly, however, had
he resumed his study of the classics, before the paper-clad object,
falling with a portentous thud, rolled under Gilbert’s legs.

This time there was real commotion, and Louis, who had removed himself
to a further corner, shook with stifled mirth as his cousin and the
old man made simultaneous dives under the seat. Its wrappings having
come off in the transit, it was plainly a large pumpkin with which the
latter finally emerged.

“You are very good, citizen,” he exclaimed, as the Marquis’ head and
his own narrowly escaped collision. “I am deeply ashamed to have
inconvenienced you with my poor pumpkin.” He regarded the erring
vegetable with a mixture of pride and sorrow, for it had suffered in
its fall.

“The citizen is a very successful gardener,” hazarded Gilbert, also
looking at it.

“Gardening is my passion,” returned the old man fervently. And he went
off into a tolerably long panegyric of the occupation, concluding by
saying: “But I weary you, citizen, for you have not the air of one
interested in agricultural pursuits.”

“On the contrary,” replied the Marquis, “I am deeply concerned in
them.” And with guarded allusions to a small estate, he spoke, for the
sake of being agreeable, of English methods, and how far they might be
pursued in France, while Louis gazed from each window in turn at the
distant woods of Le Perche and La Ferté-Vidame.

Gilbert’s neighbour heard him enthralled. “But I am listening to a
master!” he exclaimed, when Gilbert paused, afraid of saying too much.
“Citizen, you are fortunate indeed, in these days of political
turmoil, to know such rural delights! How true to-day is what the
Mantuan writes—I was just reading it when my cabbage fell down.”
He picked up his book and began to declaim—

    “‘Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
      Panaque, Silvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!
      Illum non populi fasces, non purpura regum
      Flexit, et infidos agitans discordia fratres;’—

that line might almost apply to the Princes—

     ‘Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro’

—the Austrians to the life!

     ‘Non res Romano, perituraque regna.’

How extraordinarily apt a passage, citizen!”

It was, had it been true that agricultural delights had really
banished political cares from the mind of his hearer. But the citation
appeared to the Marquis a possible trap, and he preferred not to
comment on it. The old man, however, turned the page and proceeded
along a further stretch of delicate ground.

“Listen to this, citizen. Would you not say that Virgil was writing of
the Assembly and the _émigrés_?

     ‘Hic stupet attonitus rostris: hunc plausus hiantem
      Per cuneos (geminatus enim plebisque patrumque)
      Corripuit:’

—Vergniaud, or whom you like—

                   ‘gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum,’—

may it not come to that! But listen—this is Coblentz:

     ‘Exilioque demos et dulcia limina mutant,
      Atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole jacentem.’”

The reader looked up, and albeit Gilbert was quite innocent of any
intention of seeking a country lying under another sun after the
manner of the _émigrés_, he was not sure that his kindly-looking
vis-à-vis, with his shrewd spectacled eyes, had not some suspicion of
him. His uneasiness was not shared by Louis, who, as M. des Graves
truly said, had forgotten his Virgil, and who was covertly yawning.
The Marquis endeavoured to show an interest which should not commit
him to any opinion on these interpretations.

“Very remarkable, very,” said the reader, shaking his head. He closed
the _Georgics_, took a long look at Château-Foix, and said: “You would
be doing me a great favour, citizen, if you would tell me again about
that English plan of sowing beans and clover—was it not?—alternately
with wheat.”

Considerably relieved at forsaking so dangerous an exegesis, Gilbert
readily complied with this request. It transpired in the course of a
long conversation that the old man was by profession an apothecary at
Mortagne, but that he had a little country house, with some land, near
Verneuil, to which it was his joy to retreat from time to time, and
where, indeed, he hoped shortly to retire for good. His name was
Maillard; the girls who had seen him off were his sister’s children,
who, with their mother, lived at Verneuil. This information, and much
more on his horticultural successes and failures, he tendered simply
and agreeably; asked no inconvenient questions, and forced Gilbert to
tell no lies—except that, referring once to the bored Louis as “your
friend,” he had to be corrected, and begged Gilbert’s pardon. Thus the
miles of hillier country between Tourouvre and Mortagne passed, and at
about eight in the evening they reached their destination.

“To what inn would you recommend us to go?” asked the Marquis, as,
leaving Louis to bring forth the cabbages, he helped M. Maillard out
with his basket, his pumpkin, and his nosegay.

The apothecary gave him a sudden glance so keen that Gilbert was
startled. “Anywhere but to the Croix Blanche,” he said. “I would not
recommend that. Thank you; my boy, here, will carry these things. Bon
voyage, citizen, and a thousand thanks for your agreeable and
instructive conversation.” He shook hands warmly, and trotted off.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Louis, stretching himself, “I thought he was
going to bestow the pumpkin on you. I want my supper; don’t you, after
talking so much?”

But supper was not easy to find. Mortagne had been holding one of its
big horse-fairs, and was very full. Two inns in succession refused
them, and they were told that there was but one other—the Croix
Blanche. Towards this the travelers bent their steps, not in very good
humour.

“This comes of my having lost the baggage,” sighed the Vicomte. “They
think we are tramps.”

“There’s one thing you don’t look like,” retorted Gilbert, “and that’s
a servant. You see, it never occurred to that old man that you were
one.”

“It shows his perspicacity,” returned Louis airily. “And for that I
forgive him his boring conversation on potatoes. And—the deuce! isn’t
this his shop?”

They stopped involuntarily and glanced in. The proprietor was behind
the counter, and, chancing to look up, saw them and ran to the door.
“Where are you going, citizen?” he asked. “Not to the Croix Blanche?”

“The other inns are full,” said the Marquis.

M. Maillard pulled at his chin. “You will be very uncomfortable,” he
said slowly. “No, I really could not allow you to go there. You must
give me the pleasure of your company for the night.”

Gilbert protested in vain, and in the end they followed M. Maillard
through his shop, where a lank-haired young assistant was putting away
bottles, to his domicile behind.

“Perhaps,” whispered Louis hopefully in his cousin’s ear, “the old boy
has some more nieces here.”

But he had not, and Gilbert could not help smiling at the Vicomte’s
face of dismay, when the latter, in his capacity of valet, was handed
over to the sour-visaged housekeeper who was sole ruler of M.
Maillard’s establishment. But whatever kind of evening Louis spent—and
Gilbert did not see him again that night—Château-Foix was not
unagreeably occupied with the converse of the good old apothecary. And
never, as they discussed their well-cooked meal, or fingered the books
in the little study, did it occur to Gilbert to wonder why the old man
had been so anxious to keep him, even at this cost, from going to the
Croix Blanche—where, at the same hour, the local Jacobin club was
holding its bi-weekly meeting, and where the landlord, the greatest
patriot in all Mortagne, was concluding a peroration demanding the
head of every aristocrat in Normandy.

Of these things Gilbert was comfortably ignorant, and woke in the
morning to find his cousin standing over him with a steaming jug in
his hand.

“I have brought your shaving water,” said he, shaking the Marquis
vigorously. “Kindly get up at once, and remove me from the roof which
shelters that accursed woman in its kitchen, or I shall denounce you
as an aristocrat!”

Gilbert hit out at him with his free arm, and Louis retreated
laughing. “You have nearly dislocated my shoulder,” complained his
victim, rubbing it. “Stay and help me to dress, as your duty is. Was
the lady, then, so terrible?”

The Marquis’ toilet was nearly completed when a heavy but feminine
tread was heard approaching. Saint-Ermay sprang up from the arm of the
chair on which he was perched.

“Horrors! it’s that old woman!” he exclaimed. “Here, sit down, and
give me your hair-ribbon or something!” He seized the comb from his
cousin’s hand and pushing him into a chair, began upon Gilbert’s black
locks with rather malicious energy as, in response to the Marquis’s
permission, the housekeeper bore in his coffee and rolls. The door had
hardly shut behind her ere Château-Foix snatched at the comb.

“Thank Heaven that I am not usually in your power like this!” he
ejaculated. “I should certainly cut my hair à la Titus to escape
your ministrations. No, thanks, I’ll tie it myself. Have you had
breakfast?”

Louis nodded. “Ages ago—with that charmer. Shall I give you yours?”

And the Marquis, as he tied his hair, looked at the young man pouring
out the coffee in the little prim room. If Louis’ facility for playing
at being boys in a story of adventure, when they were grown men in
real and grave peril, had caused him apprehension, and would probably
cause it again, yet at this moment, in the morning sunshine, he liked
him for it. Perhaps, in some subtle way, he felt that he was offering
his cousin amends for his suspicions.

Three-quarters of an hour later, when, after an almost affectionate
leave-taking of his host, he entered the yard of the principal inn
with Louis, the sense of peril returned upon him vividly, and was not
without its effect on the Vicomte. For two, three, four National
Guards in succession were getting into the Bellême and Mamers
diligence. The travellers’ eyes met.

“It is too risky,” said Gilbert in a low voice. “We must ride or walk,
and get a conveyance further on.” To give countenance to their entry
into the yard he enquired the time of the diligence back to Verneuil,
and also contrived to elicit the fact that by avoiding the high-road
and taking a cross-country route they could shorten their way, and cut
off Bellême altogether. On reflection Gilbert judged it more prudent
not to hire saddle-horses, and they set out on foot along the narrow
road.

“Now you see how providential it was that I lost the baggage,”
observed Louis, as they swung along. “But we are coming down in the
world. First a post-chaise, then the diligence, and now the human
foot. I wonder where we shall sleep to-night—as tramps, in a barn,
I should surmise.”

He little knew how prophetic was his jest.

“If we really looked like tramps,” retorted the Marquis, “I daresay
it might be better for us. I wish our clothes were not so new and
respectable.”

“Roll in the dust, then,” suggested his cousin. “Or slit your coat
with your penknife. We might have pawned these things at Mortagne.
I should love to be disguised as a _sans-culotte_, for I am tired
of being so neat and sober in this raiment of your choice. And
meanwhile—though as your servant it is no concern of mine—as what do
you propose to pass yourself off, supposing some patriot insists on
knowing your station in life? You can’t, with any prospect of being
believed, say you are a bricklayer, or a carter.”

Gilbert replied that he thought the speaker was going to settle the
question for him, and Louis looked at him critically.

“I am afraid it will have to be something very dull. You can’t look
like a brigand or anything really desirable. A lawyer—a doctor—no,
parbleu, I have it, of course—an apothecary, like our late host. It
will be quite a safe profession, for not having any drugs with you,
you cannot be called upon to make up pills on the spur of the moment.
And, as I know to my cost, you can talk by the hour about vegetables.”

Gilbert smiled, but conceded that the plan, if called for, might be
worth trying. “Only do not go about announcing us as druggists without
necessity,” he warned the inventor. “I can bandage a cut, but that is
the extent of my surgical knowledge.”

“Never mind; perhaps you will have a chance of putting even that
accomplishment in practice,” said Louis, switching at a wayside
thistle. And again he did not know that he was invested with the gift
of prophecy.

                             CHAPTER XIX

                      CONCERNING A HANDKERCHIEF

     “If you be the Earl, as I think you be,
      Sit down and drink the red wine with me;
      But I rede ye, when ye shall rise from the board,
      Ye commend your soul to the saints, my lord!”

At noon they came into the square at Mamers. Louis was in wild
spirits; amused with the country people who thronged the wide
market-place—it was market-day—and wanting to buy all kinds of useless
objects at the stalls as they picked their way through the crowd
looking for an inn. The Hôtel d’Espagne appeared so full that they
chose an eating-house instead, and hence, after a modest repast,
Gilbert sallied forth to enquire for a conveyance. He came back with
the disconcerting intelligence that the diligence for Fresnay and
Sillé-le-Guillaume had already started, and that there would not be
another till the late afternoon.

“We must walk it,” he said to Louis, adding in a lower tone: “It would
be unwise to wait about here so long for the diligence.”

“How many miles is Sillé?” asked Louis, who was finishing his coffee.
He made a slight grimace when he heard. “And we have already walked
about a hundred!”

“We can always stop at Fresnay, which is about fifteen, instead of
going further,” said his cousin.

“I suspect we shall,” returned the Vicomte. He got up with a little
sigh. “Well, needs must when the devil drives! I beg your pardon,
Gilbert; I did not mean to be personal. I should enjoy this walking
tour better if it were not so hot.”

At that instant the Marquis became aware of two young peasant women
who were looking at them with interest and whispering together. The
elder of them suddenly approached him. “Messieurs,” she said, with the
trace of a blush, “if you want to get to Fresnay, my sister and I are
starting back for Saint-Ouen, which is almost on the way . . .” And
she looked from one to the other of the travellers, the tint deepening
on her round, fresh visage.

“Madame, we should inconvenience you,” said the Marquis, hesitating.

“_Nenni_,” replied the damsel, and she pointed through the open door
to a large market cart which reclined on its shafts near the church.
“You see, Monsieur, that it would hold a great many.”

And thus it was settled, and in a few moments they were following the
sisters across the sunlit market-place to the vehicle in question,
Louis carrying a large basket full of their purchases. His spirits
were by no means lowered by this turn of affairs.

“We may feel particularly safe in the hands of these nymphs,” he
observed _sotto voce_ to Gilbert, “for they did not, as you may have
noticed, treat us to the eternal ‘citizen’ which I am getting so sick
of.”

Amid laughter they helped to put in the stout Percheron horse. The
baskets and a good-sized roll of Mamers cloth were stowed away under
the seats, together with a vociferous duck which had not been sold;
and, with the eldest sister and Château-Foix seated in front, and
Louis with the younger behind, also facing the horse, the equipage
rattled out of the market-place. It attracted little attention. A
swain, somewhat the worse for drink, who stood in a by-street, and
requested the fair charioteer to tell him with whom she had taken up
now, narrowly escaped destruction, the shaft catching him with some
force and sending him into the gutter, wherein he sat, still repeating
his query to the world in general.

“That was my second cousin, Michel,” observed the younger sister to
Louis. And she added, somewhat unnecessarily: “He was drunk.”

The Percheron horse did not exert himself unduly up hills, and the
miles rolled past but slowly. The sun was very hot, but the vehicle
contained a large faded green umbrella, which the cousins held in turn
over the heads of their respective partners. The heat, the hard seat,
and the jogging made Gilbert feel tired and sleepy, but Louis kept up
an animated conversation with both damsels at once. Occasionally he
declared that the captive duck was biting large pieces out of his
legs, a witticism which had enormous success. But in the end, despite
the hilly road and the horse-flies, they reached the turning to
Saint-Ouen. Great were the leave-takings; but the white caps, with
many a backward turn, dwindled at last along the side road.

“Goddesses with the machine!” yawned Louis. “Good heavens! how thirsty
I am!”

“No wonder,” retorted the Marquis. “And yet you complain of my talking
too much to M. Maillard, a really intelligent man.”

“I was paying our fare,” said Louis, yawning again. “One had to do
something. Would you rather have kissed them? Let’s get into the wood;
this sun makes one damned sleepy.” He thrust his arm into Gilbert’s,
and pulled him into the shade.

The road to Sillé-le-Guillaume lay through the heart of the forest—a
matter of some four miles, so they had been told. It was now six
o’clock; there was more than enough time to get to Sillé by dusk—time
enough, in fact, to push on to Evron some eight miles beyond, had
either of them had the inclination to do so. But, as Louis pointed out
with some eloquence, the most sensible thing to do would be to lie
down and rest in the wood. He was obviously tired, and Gilbert himself
confessed to feeling weary. So they left the main road and plunged
along a by-path until, finding a suitable tree, they threw themselves
down beneath it.

The green coolness, after the hot hilly road and the day’s persistent
sun, was delicious. In five minutes Louis was asleep. Gilbert studied
him for a little, flung at his ease on the moss; yes, he looked too
serenely unconscious for treachery. And how had he dared to put the
letters of that terrible word near those of Lucienne’s name . . . how
had he dared to! But the fatigue which, in quickening his mental
vision, had begun to bring a hundred pictures of her, finally
overpowered its own work, and he fell fast asleep.

He woke with a start, to find their late positions reversed, for
Louis, wide awake, was sitting with his hands clasped round his knees
regarding him with an air of amusement.

“I wouldn’t wake you,” he observed, “but do you know how long we’ve
slept? We have been here nearly two hours.”

The long July day was dying rapidly now, was dead rather, and the two
walked along under the trees agreeably enough, until they came to an
unexpected and perplexing fork in the road. After due discussion they
took the left-hand turning instead of keeping straight on, found after
a time that they had strayed into a by-way, but persevered, and
emerged, a little before nine o’clock, on another high-road. Along
this, a few hundred yards to the right of them, shone the lights of a
tiny village, which was obviously not Sillé. A passing rustic informed
them that the hamlet was Pézé-le-Robert, and the road the highway from
Beaumont-sur-Sarthe to Sillé-le-Guillaume.

Louis sighed. “Couldn’t we at least have supper here?” he asked
pathetically. “It’s heart-rending to think how long it is since we had
our last meal.”

The Marquis laughed. “Now that you remind me, I feel very hungry too,”
he admitted. “Let us sup here, then, if we can; we might possibly get
a bed as well.”

As it happened, the first house to which they came, a tiny low-browed
inn, displayed a faded but recognisable wheatsheaf with the legend, “A
la Gerbe d’Or.” A slatternly-looking woman with a dirty cloth in her
hand appeared in response to their knock. In her wake the travellers
exchanged the peculiar close smell of the passage for the hardly more
agreeable though varied odours of the kitchen of the hostelry, which
appeared to be its dining-room also. A couple of rough-looking men
were playing cards at a table in the middle of the room. The woman
ushered the cousins to a small oblong table nearer to the window, at
the end of which sat an individual who was making great play with his
soup. His liberal exhibition of the method of suction came, however,
to an end about a moment after the two had sat down, when, leaning
back in his chair, he pulled out a toothpick and used it vigorously.
While engaged in the performance of this merely ceremonial act—for
there was no meat in the soup—he subjected the newcomers to a steady
scrutiny, not diverted until the advent of a plate of meat, to which
he transferred his attention.

The thin soup was hot, at any rate, the stewed meat passable. The
cousins were half-way through the latter before the man at the end of
the table pushed away his empty plate.

“Pas mal, la mère,” he remarked. “A trifle overdone, perhaps. But it
is something to get meat at all. Some never taste it from week’s end
to week’s end. That’s true, isn’t it, citizen?” he added, leaning
forward and pointedly addressing his query to the Marquis, who sat
opposite at the other end of the little table.

“Perfectly,” responded Gilbert without enthusiasm.

“But you’ve never had to go without it, eh? You’ve never known a day
when you haven’t eaten good, satisfying meat? Come now, confess it!”
And he cackled with a rather unpleasant laughter.

The Marquis was taken aback, and he was also angry at the impertinence.
He was about to reply in no very conciliatory spirit when Louis
suddenly struck in.

“Do you think that we seem too fat and well-liking, citizen?” he asked
gaily. “Our looks belie us if you do. For my part, it’s a long day
since I have tasted meat like this.” Which was true.

“Come from far?” asked the other, producing the toothpick again.

“Far enough to be tired,” replied the Vicomte casually. “From Mamers,
if it interests you to know.”

“Tired!” exclaimed the questioner with a sneer. “Gentry like you
didn’t walk all the way from Mamers, I’ll wager.”

His tone was extremely offensive. From where he sat Louis could see
the table in the middle of the room, and was aware that the two men
sitting at it had stopped their card-playing to listen.

“Quite true,” he said, as he helped himself to wine. “Two charming
_citoyennes_ were so kind as to give us a lift in their cart part of
the way.”

“And shall you stop here to-night?”

“No,” said Gilbert curtly, tired of the insolent and significant
interrogatory.

“Beds not good enough for you, I suppose,” riposted their fellow-guest.

Château-Foix took no notice, but saying to Louis in a low voice, “We
had best begone as soon as we can,” he finished his plateful of meat
in silence, and the Vicomte followed his example. At the end Gilbert
knocked on the table with the handle of his knife to summon the
landlady. “The reckoning, if you please,” he called out.

As if the word had been a preconcerted signal the little man at the
other end of the table sprang to his feet. “There is another reckoning
to be settled first!” he screamed. “You shall pay it before you leave
this place. Citizens, I appeal to you to do your duty! These men are
_ci-devants_—they are aristocrats from Paris—escaping, most probably,
from the just doom the nation imposes on them—aristocrats who have
ground us down for a thousand years, and boast even now of seducing
our wives and daughters. . . .”

The two other men were on their feet. The Marquis, conscious of
unknown perils behind him, had also risen, but Louis, having a clear
view of the whole room, was still sitting coolly in his chair against
the wall. In spite of the extreme seriousness of the situation the
orator’s interpretation of their ride in the market cart was too much
for his gravity, and he was openly laughing. His sangfroid still
further maddened the denunciator.

“I tell you that it is true!” cried the latter, his voice breaking on
a high note of rage. “I denounce them—I spit on them—enemies of the
nation—aristocrats——”

“Prove it!” said Gilbert sternly, grasping the back of his chair as a
possible weapon. “You cannot!”

A positive yell of triumph and malice escaped the little man, and
plucking something white from his breast he turned it about for a
second feverishly, and then held out to his allies a fine lawn
handkerchief with a tiny coronet in the corner.

“It is his!” he cried, pointing to Louis. “He cannot deny it. It was
under the table by his foot . . . and look at it, my friends!”

The taller man snatched it from him. “It is true!” he cried with an
oath. “No one but a _ci-devant_ carries a handkerchief like that!”

Louis got leisurely up, his eyes dancing. “Ah, my friend,” he said
softly, “there are so many _ci-devants_ nowadays. You no doubt are a
_ci-devant_ scavenger or something of the sort, and the gentleman at
the end of the table——”

His voice was drowned in the hubbub that ensued, as the individual in
question, screaming “Arrest them!” flung himself towards Louis. There
was the table between them, but the young man’s fist, shooting out
like lightning, caught him between the eyes, and he staggered back, to
subside upon the hearthstone. Ere he reached it the shorter of the two
card-players was wrestling bodily with the Marquis, who had not space
to use his chair. The other was crouching in the dusky corner near the
window with the evident intention of taking Gilbert in the rear.
Suddenly Château-Foix forced his vociferating foe downwards and
backwards over the table, and at this the man in the corner sprang
forward.

“Take care! he’s coming on you from behind!” shouted Louis, and he
leapt from his own entrenched position between the table and the wall
and rushed between them. In a second he was sent spinning out of the
way, to be brought up by the centre table, over which he fell with a
crash. But he had defeated the enemy’s design. Hurling his beaten
opponent on to the ground the Marquis snatched up the scarcely-tasted
bottle of wine by his plate and broke it fair and full across the head
of his new assailant. The man collapsed groaning at his feet, and with
his fall the coast was clear. The woman had fled long ago.

“Come on, Louis!” shouted Gilbert to his cousin, who was rather
dizzily picking himself up from the debris of cards and shattered
plates. “No—not by the door—the window!”

He had the casement open in an instant; the drop was barely five feet.
Louis scrambled after him, and the Marquis, guided by instinct rather
than by sight, hurried through a little orchard, a paddock, over a
brook, through a meagre hedge, and, bearing always to the left, and
away from Sillé-le-Guillaume, was forced at last to emerge into the
high-road.

Assuring himself that Saint-Ermay was close at his heels, he started
to run down the starlit road. His own footfalls filled his ears with a
horrid sense of their betraying loudness, and it was not for a minute
or so that he realised the growing faintness of those behind. When he
did so he looked over his shoulder, and then stopped in astonishment.
Louis, now some ten yards behind, had dropped to a walk, and a
leisurely one at that. He went quickly back towards him.

“I thought you were a good runner,” was on his lips, instead of which
he cried sharply: “What’s the matter?”

“Go on without me,” said the Vicomte breathlessly. “I—I really can
come no further.” He staggered a little as he spoke; one hand was
clutching at his left breast.

A quick fear shot into the Marquis’ mind. “Are you hurt, my dear boy?”
he asked anxiously, taking a step towards him, for he looked as though
he would fall.

“He had a knife . . .” said Louis faintly but succinctly, and with the
words reeled sideways into his cousin’s arms.

                             CHAPTER XX

                       A KNIFE WITH TWO EDGES

     “I must not think of thee. . . .
      .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
      But when sleep comes to close the difficult day,
         When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
         And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
      Must doff my will as raiment laid away,—
         With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
         I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.”
                                       —ALICE MEYNELL, _Renouncement_.

Here, indeed, was a pretty problem. Louis’ head lay with alarming
inertness against the Marquis’ shoulder, and Gilbert soon became aware
that it was only the tightness of his own grip which kept the Vicomte
in an upright position at all, for he had quite lost consciousness.
After holding him thus for a moment, Château-Foix lowered his cousin
to the ground until his head rested on his knee, and, peering into his
face, felt hastily for his heart. Then he as hastily laid him down and
stood up, listening, for he thought that he heard the pursuit.

The fancied sound brought him to his senses. Louis was at least alive,
and whatever were his injury it was madness to stay to examine it on
the high-road. He looked round. Not five yards from the dark figure at
his feet there was a coppice running straight inland from the road,
and bordering a field. And . . . yes, thank Heaven! . . . there was
a gate in the field; Heaven send also that it were not fastened!
Château-Foix sprang to it. It was not secured, but swung easily open
when the latch was lifted. He came back and dragged at his cousin.
Louis was slightly built, and he himself muscular, but it was no very
easy task to lift such a dead weight from the ground. With the Vicomte
at last in his arms, staggering a little beneath the weight, he
hurried through the gate, shutting it with his foot.

The field stretched away in front and on the right with no sign of
cover. The coppice which marched with it was plainly their best chance
of safety, and Château-Foix plodded on beside it, looking for a gap in
its strong boundary hedge of thorn, over which the trees leaned with
little rustlings in the night wind, mocking him with the shelter he
could not attain. For himself he might have forced a way, but it was
out of the question to drag Louis through. A couple of sheep tumbled
up almost under his feet, and cantered off, bleating. “Enough to give
the alarm,” thought the Marquis. How heavy Louis was, and how still;
it was like carrying a dead man. With an effort he shifted him higher
over his shoulder; as he did so his cousin’s sleeve brushed against
his cheek, and the sleeve was wet. He was now thirty yards or so from
the road, and was beginning to despair of finding an opening, when
suddenly the hedge thinned, presenting a narrow gap. He stumbled
through it, took a few steps into the thickness of the coppice, laid
his burden under a tree, and sank exhausted beside it.

It was much darker in the little wood, and though there was still no
sign of pursuit, he feared to strike a light. However, he could just
distinguish Louis’ pale features when he bent over him, and on
unfastening his clothes his shirt glimmered white, except where it
was stained a much darker hue. His heart was beating faintly but
regularly, yet the Marquis exclaimed as his fingers met the lukewarm
trickle whose nature he guessed too easily. As much by feeling as
by sight he located its source, a stab in the left shoulder; how
dangerous it was impossible to tell in the starlight. Presumably its
recipient had fainted from loss of blood, a not very surprising
consequence of his hasty flight.

Gilbert tied up the wound as best he could with his handkerchief. It
was amazing that there was no sign of pursuit. Yet they were near, too
near the Gerbe d’Or; nor did he suppose that a night in the open was
beneficial to a wounded man, and he resolved to try to find a roof of
some sort. Lest Louis should recover consciousness in his absence, he
tore a leaf from his pocket-book, scribbled on it a line or two to
that effect—it was true that he could hardly read them himself in the
dim light—and closed the Vicomte’s hand round it. Then he took off
his coat, spread it carefully over the prostrate figure, and made
cautiously for the gap.

With his departing footsteps the thicket sank into silence. Now and
again the leaves rustled, and a dead bramble branch, lifted by a
gust, flung itself on to the Marquis’ coat and caught there. The
loudest adjacent noise came from the sheep cropping the grass on
the other side of the hedge; but down the road, in the direction of
Sillé-le-Guillaume, faint shouts announced a tardy and mistaken
pursuit. Louis lay stiller than sleep under his tree and heard
nothing.

         *         *         *         *         *         *

It might have been three-quarters of an hour afterwards that the
Marquis returned. It was grown a little lighter now, and he scanned
Saint-Ermay’s face with renewed anxiety as he bent over him. Then he
poured a little eau-de-vie down his throat, and watched the effect. In
less than a minute a contraction passed over the Vicomte’s features;
he sighed, and moved his head restlessly on the arm which supported
it. Château-Foix repeated the treatment, and Louis stirred, gasped a
little, and opened his eyes.

“What execrable brandy!” he observed feebly, but with some emphasis.

“But you ought to be thankful for it,” returned the Marquis. “I had
some difficulty in getting any. How do you feel now, Louis?”

With his cousin’s aid Saint-Ermay struggled into a sitting posture.
“Much as usual, thank you,” he replied lightly. “I cannot think how I
came to be so foolish as to faint. I remember——” He broke off, and as
his gaze fell on the stem of a tree opposite him, he seemed to become
aware for the first time that he was not where he had fallen.

“How the devil did I come here?” he demanded in tones of sudden
surprise.

“I carried you.”

“You carried me! Great Heavens!” exclaimed the Vicomte, twisting
himself in Gilbert’s hold to look at him. “How many miles, may I ask?”

“A matter of a hundred yards or so. It was nothing; you are not very
heavy.”

“But those rascals from the inn?”

“There has been no pursuit—at least not in this direction.”

“But I suppose there may be. How long have I been here?”

“Nearly an hour,” said his cousin. “I have found a place of comparative
shelter—if you think you can manage to get to it,” he added a little
dubiously.

For answer Louis began to scramble to his feet. “My shoulder may be
impaired, my dear Gilbert,” he retorted, “but my legs at least are
sound.” He got to them as he spoke, but their condition was evidently
by no means as unimpeachable as he had stated.

“I thought as much,” said the Marquis, putting an arm round him. “It
is obvious that I shall have to carry you again if you do not move
less violently.”

“Very well,” responded Louis submissively. “But it is nothing; I am
only a little giddy; I can walk quite well.” Nevertheless he hastily
put out his hand to a tree-trunk as Gilbert loosed his hold and
stooped to pick up his coat. “And how far is it, this refuge of
yours?” he enquired, as, with the assistance of his cousin’s arm, he
made his way through the gap in the hedge.

“About two fields off; but we had better skirt round by the hedges
for fear of being seen. It is a hayloft, and the owner will ask no
questions.”

“Estimable man!” commented Saint-Ermay.

“It happens to be a woman,” observed the Marquis, as they emerged into
the open field.

The Vicomte was delighted. “I might have known it!” he exclaimed. “Is
she pretty? How did you work on her feelings, Gilbert? I have always
said that if you _would_ condescend . . . (No, if I am not breaking
your arm it is quite enough, thanks.) Did you give her a kiss? Mon
Dieu, what I have missed!”

“For Heaven’s sake, be quiet!” urged Château-Foix. “It is no time for
laughing. No, I did not kiss her—I should have been afraid. She is a
middle-aged proprietress with a tongue, and she will allow me and the
friend who has met with an accident to sleep in her loft. She asks no
questions, and if we are taken, we are tramps who have sought refuge
there without her knowledge. She has no servants.”

“Excellent!” said the Vicomte gaily. “You are a general and a diplomat
thrown away. Still, your success remains unexplained. I am sure you
must have whispered soft nothings of some sort to her. Or perhaps you
bullied her; some like it, I believe. Commend me, after all, to you
impervious men for managing a woman!”

“We are certainly lucky,” rejoined the Marquis, ignoring these
remarks, “always supposing that she does not denounce us.”

“Denounce us! My dear Gilbert, you are too modest. It is evident to me
that you have inspired _une grande passion_, one of those great loves
of antiquity or romance. Denounce us! You may be sure that the lady
will be cut in pieces rather than betray your hiding-place—in fact,
after the usual fashion of heroines, she will probably have you down
from your loft, push you behind the curtains in her own chaste
apartment, and lock the door. The minions of the . . . of the nation
arrive; you know the scene . . . outraged modesty . . . ‘Ruffians,
respect at least my bedchamber! Do you dare to suggest that there is
a man in there!’ . . . Delicious! I only hope it may come to that,
provided I witness it.”

With these and similar excursions of the fancy did Louis beguile their
pilgrimage through the first field, though he stumbled more than once,
and the weight on the Marquis’ arm grew perceptibly heavier as they
proceeded. By the time they were in the second field he had dropped
his banter, having obviously little breath to spare, and the two
plodded slowly on in silence.

“Does your shoulder pain you?” asked the Marquis suddenly, noticing
his laboured breathing.

“Oh, pas trop,” was the light reply, but it was given through closed
teeth. Gilbert slipped his arm round the speaker.

“Put your right arm round my neck,” he suggested, and with an attempt
at a laugh Louis obeyed. “Your ideas are always excellent,” he said
faintly.

Five minutes more of slow and difficult progression brought them to
their goal, a collection of scattered outhouses standing in a small
and apparently deserted farmyard. Their shelter loomed before them:
below, the habitat of a large hay waggon; above, a loft and granary.

“Yes, but how am I going to get you up?” asked the Marquis. He had
found a lantern on a peg, and was lighting it, for it was very dusk in
the shed. Louis, utterly spent, leant against the upright ladder which
led to the desired haven. His breath came in gasps, and the light,
when it was obtained, showed the beads on his forehead. “I don’t
see how you will ever get up,” repeated Château-Foix, eyeing him
dubiously.

Louis glanced up. “It certainly does look steep enough . . . for the
path to Heaven,” he remarked with difficulty. “Perhaps . . . if you
were to give me an example . . . and a little help on the way. . .”

The suggestion was adopted, and by dint of a good deal of hauling the
Vicomte managed to clamber on to the floor above, where, with an
unfinished jest on his lips, he immediately collapsed in a second dead
faint. After he had seen his face, Gilbert was only surprised that he
had held out so long.

The loft, not very large, was lighted by a round aperture at the
farther side, and the hay was scarcely more than a carpeting to the
floor, except about midway, against the wall, where it rose in an
untidy pile to the roof. The Marquis, after a brief survey, lifted his
insensible cousin once more in his arms, and carried him over to the
other side of their refuge. As he picked up the lantern afterwards he
saw that his hands were smeared with his blood. He descended into the
yard, got a bucket of water from the well, and by the light of the
lantern set to work to investigate the Vicomte’s injury.

After a little hesitation he began with his knife carefully to cut
through the collar and the coat-sleeve. Louis still lay motionless.
Gilbert next attacked his shirt, but as it had stuck in one place to
the wound he was obliged to pull it away, and, gently as he did it,
the pain of the operation was evidently severe enough to bring
Saint-Ermay out of his swoon. As he opened his eyes the Marquis
paused, with a mute question in his glance.

“Go on,” said Louis, with a grimace. “Yes, it hurts damnably, but I am
sure that your intentions are good.”

With that he shut his eyes again, and Château-Foix went on with
his ministrations. The stab, just below the left collar-bone, was
sufficiently deep, though in itself, thought Gilbert, scarcely
dangerous. He was not anatomist enough to realise how near it had come
to being mortal. The palpable loss of blood impressed him most. As he
was bathing the wound Louis suddenly opened his eyes again.

“Gilbert,” he said in an odd voice, “you should not do this. I wish
you had left me on the road.”

The words woke in Gilbert’s mind an echo of Louis’ protestation in the
bedroom at the Etats-Généraux on the night of his release, and of his
own reception of it. Well, it was different now, thank God!

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said cheerfully—and even
as he said it something whispered at the back of his mind, “Supposing
you had not been mistaken. . . .” He paused in his work and looked
down at his cousin. Louis’ eyes, a little sunk in his white face, met
his full.

“You think I don’t mean it,” he said unsteadily, and without a trace
of his usual light manner. “I do, on my honour!” He put up his right
hand and caught weakly at Gilbert’s wrist. “Promise me, promise me,”
he repeated imploringly, “that if they come here after us you will do
the best for yourself!”

“I shall do that in any case, my dear boy,” replied his cousin.
“Now, if you will let go my hand and lie still I will bandage this
shoulder.”

The young man sighed, and released the hand. Nor did he say another
word while the Marquis bound up his shoulder, using his cravat in
default of anything better, except to remark, at the end of the
operation, that he was very sleepy. He seemed, indeed, to be slipping
back into unconsciousness of some kind. Gilbert arranged the
surrounding hay as comfortably as he could, found on a nail an old and
not very dirty horse-cloth, spread it over the Vicomte, and gave him
some more brandy. As he withdrew the arm which he had put beneath his
cousin’s head to raise it, Louis rallied himself for a last effort.

“If ever you loved me, Gilbert,” he pleaded, “promise me that you will
do what I ask—that you will leave me if there is an alarm. If you are
taken what will become of everybody at Chantemerle? What use is there
in sacrificing yourself . . . and for me too. . . . For God’s sake,
promise me!”

For the sake of quieting him Gilbert gave the promise he had no
intention of keeping. The light of real feeling in the anxious, tired
grey eyes had given him a little shock of emotion. He took his hand.

“I promise you that I will consider myself first. Now, will that
satisfy you? . . . My dear Louis, you absolutely must get to sleep!”

“I obey,” said the Vicomte, smiling. “I expect I shall be all right
to-morrow. If not, I rely on your promise. Good-night.”

He shut his eyes. Gilbert surveyed him for a moment, picked up the
lantern, and went with it to the other side of the loft, leaving the
recumbent figure in semi-darkness. He sat down himself with his back
against the wall, and for prudence sake blew out the light. It was not
till then that he discovered that the moon had risen.

He must have dropped off to sleep as he sat there, for he woke
suddenly with a start to wonder where he was. He remembered instantly,
and looked hastily across the half-darkness of the loft at the still
figure on the other side. A shaft of moonlight, passing through the
round aperture, lay across Louis’ breast and the lower part of his
face. The silence, the danger, the fact that he had so lately carried
his cousin senseless in his arms, suddenly tugged at the Marquis’
heart. They were playmates of but a few years agone. . . . As he
gazed, the stream of moonlight broadened and grew brighter, and, lying
like a pool of silver round Louis’ head, threw up his beautiful
profile into startling pallor and relief. Château-Foix left his place,
and going quietly through the rustling hay sat down by him.

The Vicomte was lying quite motionless, but his regular breathing and
a short scrutiny showed that he was not unconscious but asleep. He was
very pale; his hair was tangled and dusty, the ripped coat showed his
torn and bloody shirt and bandaged shoulder; his left arm lay stiffly
by his side. As Château-Foix sat with his chin in his hand and looked
at him memories full of faint fragrance stirred in his heart. It was
odd how Louis had retained his boyish appearance. At twenty-six he was
still sometimes the self-same engaging boy, “beau comme l’amour et
gentil comme un ange,” as all the countryside considered him, who
had laughed and danced away his childhood in the old garden at
Chantemerle. And there flashed into the watcher’s mental vision the
picture of a certain day in their boyhood when Louis was brought home
senseless, the result of a fall from a horse which he had been
forbidden to ride. Just so he had looked when he had been carried in
by lamenting servants, with a broken collar-bone and a livid bruise
under his curls. As it had been of yesterday Gilbert recalled his
mother’s horror, and his own terrified conviction that his cousin was
killed. There, in place of the dark loft, was the wide hall at
Chantemerle, the crackling fire, the boy, white and still, on the
carved settle, the keen snowy air blowing in through the open door,
and, breaking through the men who had just laid down their burden, a
frightened, beautiful child, who clung sobbing to him because Hector
had thrown Louis in the avenue, and he was dead.

Absurd little tragedy! Was it not Louis who, less than a month later,
was descried by the Marquise galloping wildly round a frosty meadow on
the very steed to which he owed his discomfiture? Was it not Lucienne
who was shortly afterwards discovered in tears because Louis, scarcely
convalescent, had teased her so horribly? And it was certainly he
himself who, that same winter, settled a fierce dispute with the
whilom invalid by the arbitrament of force in the shrubbery. . . .
And, for the first time, the almost forgotten blow which had left him
victor was a regret to him, for at the present moment it seemed an
outrage. Château-Foix smiled at himself; smiled too, as, at the sudden
withdrawal of the moonlight, he bent forward and put a light kiss on
Louis’ forehead.

         *         *         *         *         *         *

It was about six o’clock when Gilbert awoke the next morning, but
as he raised himself on his elbow and looked down at his cousin,
his hopes of quitting their hiding-place that day received their
death-blow. For Louis was moaning faintly, moving his head from side
to side with restless regularity. The Marquis got to his knees and
bent uneasily over him. It was plain that he was in a high fever, and
there was nothing for Château-Foix to do but to resign himself to a
day of waiting.

The Vicomte’s condition scarcely showed a change through the whole of
that long day. The Marquis sat by him, unable to do more than to keep
him fairly quiet, and to force him once or twice to drink some milk
which, with a loaf of bread, had mysteriously appeared in the shed
below. He was becoming seriously alarmed as to his state when, about
midday, the owner of the little farm suddenly paid her tenants a
visit. She was a small, alert, black-eyed scold of forty-five or
thereabouts, and as her rather formidable head appeared at the top of
the ladder the Marquis became more fully conscious of the magnitude of
his victory of the night before. But perhaps she had come to revoke
her permission. He rose from his place and waited.

“You may come and take this basket,” announced the woman in her harsh,
penetrating voice. “I have brought you something to eat, and there is
another pitcher of milk down below.” As she scrambled on to the loft
floor Gilbert began to thank her, but she cut him short. “Là là, that
is enough. Time enough to thank me when you get safely out of my loft,
without setting the hay on fire or trampling it all flat.” Here her
restless little eyes fell on the prostrate form of Louis. “How is the
other? He is lazy? He takes his ease, hein?” She began to wade through
the hay.

“No,” returned the Marquis, following her, basket in hand. “I am
afraid——”

“Ah, mon Dieu!” exclaimed Madame Geffroi, stopping short. She was
evidently taken aback. Even in his present plight Louis, as usual,
owed much to his looks. “Ah, the poor young man!” She knelt down by
the Vicomte and possessed herself of his wrist. “Fever,” she remarked,
shaking her head; and then, looking up at Château-Foix: “Show me the
wound.”

Gilbert complied, quite expecting to hear his bandaging condemned.
But Madame Geffroi touched the wounded shoulder gently with her
coarse, red, peasant’s fingers, and as gently drew the slashed coat
over it again. “Well enough for a man,” she remarked trenchantly. “You
shall have some more linen—but next time I will bandage it myself, I
think.”

It was such a relief to see a woman in his place that the Marquis
clung to her opinion, and asked her, rather helplessly, what he ought
to do. She told him, “Nothing, till the fever goes,” and they both
looked at the unconscious young man in silence, she sitting back on
her heels, Gilbert standing gloomily beside her. Louis tossed his head
from side to side, and flung out an arm violently into the hay, with
a heavy sigh. The Marquis thought that he heard the sigh echoed; at
any rate, Madame Geffroi put her hand for an instant on the burning
forehead. “Poor boy, poor boy!” she said almost softly, and, getting
to her feet, retired as abruptly as she had come.

The slow hours crawled on with the shifting sunlight, until about
three o’clock Louis ceased tossing and sank into a sort of stupor.
Château-Foix was consequently a good deal surprised and alarmed when,
after lying motionless for about an hour, he suddenly sat bolt upright
in the hay and addressed some unknown person by name.

Gilbert sprang up and went over to him. “Lie down!” he said. “Don’t
you know me, Louis?”

“Of course I do,” responded the Vicomte in a thick voice. His eyes
were extraordinarily bright. “You are Antoine de Bercy . . . I wish
I had killed you . . . liar! . . . you are not fit to speak her
name. . . .” His voice tailed off into something incoherent.

“Lie down!” said Gilbert emphatically, and forced him to obey. He was
becoming very uneasy. A man of the most punctilious delicacy in a
matter of the kind, he would rather have heard anything than his
cousin’s private affairs. The few words had already considerably
enlightened him as to the reason of Louis’ duel with De Bercy, which
the Vicomte had so unmistakably intimated that he did not wish to
reveal.

Perhaps the Marquis’ vigorous action had broken the thread of
Saint-Ermay’s rambling thoughts, for he went off at once on another
trail, and for about an hour wandered from one subject to another, now
fancying himself at Chantemerle, now in Paris, now playing again a
forgotten childish game, now winning or losing (and usually the
latter) at less innocuous sports. There were other matters too; and
where Gilbert recognised a name it was difficult to avoid acquiring
information. But how was it that, for the first time in his life,
he felt disposed to condone the excessive number of his volatile
kinsman’s _affaires du cœur_, fragmentary testimony to which was here
offered him? He knew why, but would not acknowledge the answer.

The stream of reminiscences began at last to run dry, and Louis
relapsed into a quieter mood, merely muttering in a low tone to
himself at intervals. He had ceased to toss, so, hoping that there was
some near prospect of his sleeping, Gilbert went and sat down by him,
and, almost timidly, took his hand. He was lying quite still now, but
his eyes were wide open and fixed on the opposite wall. Gilbert wished
that they would shut.

Suddenly, and in a voice singularly altered, Saint-Ermay uttered
another name. “Lucienne . . . Lucienne . . .” he said softly. The word
lingered on his lips and died away. Every vein in the Marquis’ body
hammered at its walls, but he sat motionless and did not withdraw his
hand. After all, Louis had every right to speak of her; indeed, the
extraordinary thing was that he had not done so before. And the fact
that he still sat there was proof enough that Gilbert de Chantemerle
expected to hear nothing that he should not have heard.

For a moment there was silence. All the little sounds of the farm
mounted up with intense clearness. A hen was clucking loudly in the
yard below. Louis gave a long sigh that was almost a groan, and the
fingers of his left hand locked themselves tightly into his cousin’s.
Then the voice began again.

“Lucienne, Lucienne . . . my love . . . I can’t . . . I can’t . . . O
my God, if things had been different! What do you say . . . he trusts
us . . . yes, he must never know . . . never know . . . nev——”

The Marquis wrenched his hand free of the burning fingers which
clutched now about his wrist, and staggered to his feet. And as Louis,
checked by the withdrawal of his hand, tried ineffectually to struggle
up on to his elbow, and fell back with a gasp, Château-Foix recoiled
still further, for he was literally afraid lest he should stoop and
strike his cousin on the mouth, and the horror of the knowledge of his
impulse floated recognisable, for a second of time, on the surface of
the fathomless tide of hate and revulsion which swept over him.

                             CHAPTER XXI

                  AT THE SIGN OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN

     “How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
      Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
      That hear no more your voice you hear the same,
      God! what is left but hell for company,
      But hell, hell, hell—until the name so breathed
      Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire.”
                                 —D. G. ROSSETTI, _A Last Confession_.

Madame Veuve Geffroi possessed to a singular degree the faculty of
knowing her own mind, and also, commonly, that of expressing with
accuracy and point the resolutions at which, from time to time, she
arrived by the assistance of this quality. When, therefore, she took
her way between seven and eight that evening to her hay-loft, with the
intent of presenting an ultimatum to its temporary inhabitants, the
clearness of her mental vision was momentarily obscured by the sight
of one of them seated on her chopping-log in the shed, near the foot
of the ladder, with his head buried in his hands. In the failing light
this figure startled and almost disconcerted her, and she gave vent to
a little exclamation. The Marquis raised a ghastly face and looked at
her dizzily.

“Bon Dieu! what is the matter with you?” ejaculated Madame Geffroi.

Gilbert rose mechanically.

“Are you ill too?” queried his visitor, peering at him. The Marquis
shook his head, murmuring he knew not what, and turned away to
escape her eyes. Madame Geffroi scanned what she could see of him
sceptically; then she shrugged her shoulders. “Very well then, listen
to me. How is the other up there?”

“I don’t know,” said Gilbert rather wildly. “I have been down here
. . . my God . . . how long!”

“You don’t know!” repeated Madame Geffroi with some scorn. “But he
must be either better or worse. Which is it?”

“Worse, then,” replied Château-Foix almost inaudibly.

“He has more fever?” pursued the inquisitrix. “He is perhaps
light-headed—he talks nonsense?”

“That is it,” said the Marquis, and broke—to his own infinite
surprise—into unmirthful laughter.

The note of hysteria did not escape his shrewd companion, though she
assigned it to a wrong cause. “Come,” she said, more kindly, patting
him on the arm; “you have a good heart, you suffer because your friend
is ill—or is he your brother? Never mind, but listen to me! I have
come to tell you something that will ease your anxiety. I have made up
my mind to take your brother into my house until he is better. What
have you to say to that, my young man?”

“I—but how can you?” stammered the Marquis. The twilight interview
with this insistent female was like a nightmare, from which he more
and more earnestly desired to escape, that he might be alone.

“How can I?” demanded the woman of resolution. “But as easily as
walking. You, my fine fellow, if you got him up this ladder you can
get him down again—isn’t it so?—and you can carry him to the house, a
strong man like you! I shall put him in the room I keep for my niece—a
small room, but comfortable. Then there will be no more fever—or at
least he will have some one not quite ignorant to look after him, and
he will be as snug there as a bird in its nest.”

“But, Madame,” began Gilbert, “the danger to yourself——”

“Bah!” said Madame Geffroi, “I snap my fingers at it! Besides, where
would it come from? Do you imagine that any one from there”—she
indicated Pézé over her shoulder—“would venture to come poking into my
house? Holy Virgin of virgins, no! But what would inconvenience me
would be a corpse in my loft; _that_ would compromise me! No, the
young man must be brought in. Come, up with you, my good man!” And,
feeling that he was in the hands of some higher intelligence, Gilbert
suffered himself to be waved in front of her up the ladder.

In the loft it was dimmer still. Gilbert stood like a statue when he
got there, deprived of all volition; he only felt stupidly that he
could never go near that prone, silent figure again. And yet he knew
that he was there for the express purpose of doing so. Behind him
Madame Geffroi scrambled on to the floor; he never turned his head nor
offered to help her. She walked past him, and he saw her bend over
Louis. But his own eyes were fixed on the little circular window, and
his thoughts followed them, racing round and round its circumference