it not occurred to you that the danger which threatens us and which calls for the protection of a troop is only on this side of the Loire, where the Blaisois might be minded to attempt a rescue of the Chevalier? But over yonder, Chevalier, on the Chambord side, who cares a fig for the Lord of Canaples or his fate? None; is it not so?”
He made an assenting gesture, whereupon I continued:
“This being so, I have bethought me that it will suffice if I take but three or four men and the sergeant as an escort, and cross the river with our prisoner after nightfall, travelling along the opposite shore until we reach Orleans. What think you, Lieutenant?”
He shrugged his shoulders again.
“'T is you who command here,” he answered with apathy, “not I.”
“Nevertheless, do you not think the plan a safe one, as well as one that will allay his Eminence's very natural impatience?”
“Oh, it is safe enough, I doubt not,” he replied coldly.
“Your enthusiasm determines me,” quoth I, with an irony that made him wince. “And we will follow the plan, since you agree with me touching its excellence. But keep the matter to yourself until an hour or so after sunset.”
He bowed, so utterly my dupe that I could have laughed at him. Then—“There is a little matter that I would mention,” he said. “Mademoiselle de Canaples has expressed a wish to accompany her father to Paris and has asked me whether this will be permitted her.”
My heart leaped. Surely the gods fought on my side!
“I cannot permit it,” I answered icily.
“Monsieur, you are pitiless,” he protested in a tone of indignation for which I would gladly have embraced him.
I feigned to ponder.
“The matter needs consideration. Tell Mademoiselle that I will discuss it with her at noon, if she will condescend to await me on the terrace; I will then give her my definite reply. And now, Lieutenant, let us breakfast.”
As completely as I had duped Montrésor did I presently dupe those of the troopers with whom I came in contact, among others the sergeant—and anon the Chevalier himself.
From the brief interview that I had with him I discovered that whilst he but vaguely suspected me to be St. Auban—and when I say “he suspected me” I mean he suspected him whose place I had taken—he was, nevertheless, aware of the profit which his captor, whoever he might be, derived from this business. It soon grew clear to me from what he said that St. Auban had mocked him with it whilst concealing his identity; that he had told him how he had obtained from Malpertuis the treasonable letter, and of the bargain which it had enabled him to strike with Mazarin. I did not long remain in his company, and, deeming the time not yet ripe for disclosures, I said little in answer to his lengthy tirades, which had, I guessed, for scope to trap me into betraying the identity he but suspected.
It wanted a few minutes to noon as I left the room in which the old nobleman was confined, and by the door of which a trooper was stationed, musket on shoulder. With every pulse a-throbbing at the thought of my approaching interview with Mademoiselle, I made my way below and out into the bright sunshine, the soldiers I chanced to meet saluting me as I passed them.
On the terrace I found Mademoiselle already awaiting me. She was standing, as often I had seen her stand, with her back turned towards me and her elbows resting upon the balustrade. But as my step sounded behind her, she turned, and stood gazing at me with a face so grief-stricken and pale that I burned to unmask and set her torturing fears at rest. I doffed my hat and greeted her with a silent bow, which she contemptuously disregarded.
“My lieutenant tells me, Mademoiselle,” said I in my counterfeited voice, “that it is your desire to bear Monsieur your father company upon this journey of his to Paris.”
“With your permission, sir,” she answered in a choking voice.
“It is a matter for consideration, Mademoiselle,” I pursued. “There are in it many features that may have escaped you, and which I shall discuss with you if you will honour me by stepping into the garden below.”
“Why will not the terrace serve?”
“Because I may have that to say which I would not have overheard.”
She knit her brows and stared at me as though she would penetrate the black cloth that hid my face. At last she shrugged her shoulders, and letting her arms fall to her side in a gesture of helplessness and resignation—
“Soit; I will go with you,” was all she said.
Side by side we went down the steps as a pair of lovers might have gone, save that her face was white and drawn, and that her eyes looked straight before her, and never once, until we reached the gravel path below, at her companion. Side by side we walked along one of the rose-bordered alleys, until at length I stopped.
“Mademoiselle,” I said, speaking in the natural tones of that good-for-naught Gaston de Luynes, “I have already decided, and you have my permission to accompany your father.”
At the sound of my voice she started, and with her left hand clutching at the region of her heart, she stood, her head thrust forward, and on her face the look of one who is confronted with some awful doubt. That look was brief, however, and swift to replace it was one of hideous revelation.
“In God's name, who are you?” she cried in accents that bespoke internal agony.
“Already you have guessed it, Mademoiselle,” I answered, and I would have added that which should have brought comfort to her distraught mind, when—
“You!” she gasped in a voice of profound horror. “You! You, the Judas who has sold my father to the Cardinal for a paltry share in our estates. And I believed that mask of yours to hide the face of St. Auban!”
Her words froze me into a stony mass of insensibility. There was no logic in my attitude; I see it now. Appearances were all against me, and her belief no more than justified. I overlooked all this, and instead of saving time by recounting how I came to be there and thus delivering her from the anguish that was torturing her, I stood, dumb and cruel, cut to the quick by her scorn and her suspicions that I was capable of such a thing as she imputed, and listening to the dictates of an empty pride that prompted me to make her pay full penalty.
“Oh, God pity me!” she wailed. “Have you naught to say?”
Still I maintained my mad, resentful silence. And presently, as one who muses—
“You!” she said again. “You, whom I—” She stopped short. “Oh! The shame of it!” she moaned.
Reason at last came uppermost, and as in my mind I completed her broken sentence, my heart gave a great throb and I was thawed to a gentler purpose.
“Mademoiselle!” I exclaimed.
But even as I spoke, she turned, and sweeping aside her gown that it might not touch me, she moved rapidly towards the steps we had just descended. Full of remorse, I sprang after her.
“Mademoiselle! Hear me,” I cried, and put forth my hand to stay her. Thereat she wheeled round and faced me, a blaze of fury in her grey eyes.
“Dare not to touch me,” she panted. “You thief, you hound!”
I recoiled, and, like one turned to stone, I stood and watched her mount the steps, my feelings swaying violently between anger and sorrow. Then my eye fell upon Montrésor standing on the topmost step, and on his face there was a sneering, insolent smile which told me that he had heard the epithets she had bestowed upon me.
Albeit I sought that day another interview with Yvonne, I did not gain it, and so I was forced to sun myself in solitude upon the terrace. But I cherished for my consolation that broken sentence of hers, whereby I read that the coldness which she had evinced for me before I left Canaples had only been assumed.
And