Part 12 (1/2)

To both women this portion of his narrative caused great excitement.

For, stately as the marquise was, environed, so to speak, by all the dignity of the _haute n.o.blesse_ of the days of the Great King, she could not prevent her agitation from being apparent to him. Her white, jewelled hand quivered as she raised it to her breast; her eyes sparkled as they might have sparkled when she was her daughter's age; while, as for that daughter, her bosom rose and fell with her rapid breathing, her colour came and went--once she was as pale as death, the next moment her face suffused.

”The cowards!” exclaimed the marquise; ”the base, cowardly dogs, to attack two men thus, and one hampered with a defenceless child! _Quel tour de lache!_ Oh! sir, I would to G.o.d your brand or that of your brave companion had struck the poltroon, the craven who sheltered himself behind his visor, his death blow! I would to G.o.d one of your swords had found out his heart as they found out the hearts of his mercenaries!”

The sympathy of this graceful woman--sympathy that roused her from the well-bred calmness which was her natural state, to one of almost fury--earned the deepest respect and grat.i.tude of St. Georges; yet he looked at her almost with amazement as he bowed and murmured some words of appreciation. For there was no acting here, he knew; yet she was De Roquemaure's stepmother, the kinswoman of the man whom he believed to be his and his child's attempted a.s.sa.s.sin!

And Aurelie de Roquemaure, too--what of her? A glance from under his eyes showed him that still the beauteous face was agitated as it had been before, that all which her mother had said was re-echoed by her.

Again the marquise spoke, though now she rose from the table as she did so.

”Sir,” she said, ”never rest until that man and you stand face to face, point to point; since, until that happens, your child's life will not be safe. For you, a man, a soldier, it matters not--is best, indeed, that you should meet him and end his miserable existence forever. I pray you may do ere long. And, when you do meet him, slay him like a dog! It is the only way.”

Still astonished, almost appalled, by her vehemence, St. Georges took the hand she extended him and bent over it, and next, that of her daughter, ere the two pa.s.sed out of the room.

”Forgive,” said the marquise, ”that I should feel so strongly.

I--I--have a child myself.” Then, after a pause, and turning round as she reached the corridor, she added: ”If we do not meet to-morrow ere you return to the city to fetch your child, remember, sir, I pray you, that my answer to the king or his minister is precisely different from that of the bishop. It is 'No.'”

”I will remember, madame.”

Then, with a last glance from each, both were gone. And St. Georges, standing in front of the great fireplace waiting for the old servitor to come and escort him to his room, was more overwhelmed with amazement than he had been at aught which had occurred since he set out from Pontarlier.

”What does it mean?” he whispered to himself. ”What does it mean?”

In a room at the opposite end of the corridor from that where the apartment was situated which had been bestowed on St. Georges, the mother and daughter sat. It was the sleeping-room of madame la marquise, large, vast, and sombre--save that here, too, a fire burnt in the grate, and that there were many candles alight in the sconces set about the room.

And the marquise, lying back in her deep fauteuil before the fire, her face white and drawn, and with tears upon her cheeks, was speaking to her daughter who knelt by her side.

”The wolf!” she said, ”the wolf! How know it? How find out? G.o.d! I thought that I alone, of all living people, knew, until I divulged my story to you, until I wrote to Louis asking him to do justice to a much-wronged man. Who--who has betrayed my confidence? Not the king, surely. Oh! not he, not he! Nay, more, I doubt if the letter ever reached his hands.”

”Mother,” Aurelie said, as she stroked her hand, ”there must be some other who knows.”

”There was no living soul on earth. Listen, even you do not know all.”

The girl seated herself against her mother's knee and gazed up into her face. Then she whispered: ”Tell me all now, mother. From to-night let me understand exactly with what he is encompa.s.sed. Tell me, I beg.”

”You know,” the marquise said, ”for I have told you often, that the Duc de Vannes and I loved each other when we were young--yet that we never married. No matter for the reason now--it was my fault! Let that suffice. And we parted--he to go his way, I mine. Then, some years later, not many it is true, but still long enough for us to have forgotten what had separated us, we met again, and once more he asked me to be his wife, to renew the love vows we once had made. But it was then impossible. I was affianced to your father--the day was fixed, and I had come to admire him, to respect him; in no case would I have gone back from my plighted word. So again we parted to meet only once more in life.”

The girl touched her hand--perhaps--who knows?--in admiration of her mother's strength in keeping her vow to the man who was not her first love and in discarding the man who was. And the marquise continued:

”It was one night a few weeks before he set out to join Turenne in the Palatinate. A great _fete_ was given by Louis to celebrate his birthday at St. Germain-en-Laye, his birthplace, and it was there we met again. Presently, when both of us were able to escape from the great crowd of courtiers, marshals, and ministers who surrounded the king, he told me that he was glad he had met me once more--that he wished to confide a secret to me if I would hear it, a charge if I would accept it. At first I hesitated, then--when I found it would not thrust against your father's honour”--again the girl stroked her mother's hand--”I told him he might confide in me. Aurelie, he told me that, embittered by having lost me, he had married in private an English lady, daughter of a refugee, that he had learned to love her, and that death had parted them after a few years of marriage. Also, he told me, she left him a son, whom he had brought up in ignorance of the position that must be his, but that--should he return from the Palatinate--he meant to acknowledge him. He never did return, and his son has never been acknowledged.”

”Why, my mother?” asked Aurelie, with an upward glance. ”Why?”

”Nay, child,” the marquise replied. ”Think no evil of me. No base thoughts entered my mind. No remembrance that his son stood in the way of your half-brother's inheritance--he and your father being ostensibly De Vannes's heir. No! no! no! But in that hurried interval both he and I had made one fatal slip--had committed one hideous act of forgetfulness. He had forgotten to tell me--I to ask--where this son was, and in what name he was known.”

The girl dropped her hands with a despairing action into her lap; then a moment later she turned the soft hazel eyes up again toward her mother's face and said: ”Yet now you know! You have found out!”