It was high noon on a mid-August morning of the year 1792, but Jeanne, the waiting-maid, had only just set the coffee down on the small table within the ruelle of Mme. de Montargis' magnificent bed. Great ladies did not trouble themselves to rise too early in those days, and a beauty who has been a beauty for twenty years was not more anxious then than now to face the unflattering freshness of the morning air. Laure de Montargis stirred in the shadow of her brocaded curtains, put out a white hand for the cup, sipped from it, murmured that the coffee was cold, and pushed it from her with a fretful exclamation that made Jeanne frown as she drew the tan-coloured curtains and let in the mid-day glare. Madame had been up late, Madame had lost at faro, and her servants would have to put up with Heaven alone knew how many megrims in consequence.
"Madame suffers?" inquired Jeanne obsequiously, but with pursed lips.
The lady closed her eyes. Laying her head back against the delicately embroidered pillows, she indicated by a gesture that her sufferings might be taken for granted.
"Madame has the migraine?" suggested the soft, rather false-sounding voice. "Madame will not receive?"
"Heavens! girl, how you pester me," said the Marquise sharply.
Then, falling again to a languid tone, "Is there any one there?"
Jeanne smiled with malicious, averted face as she poured rose-water from a silver ewer into a Sévres bowl, and watched it rise, dimpling, to the flower-wreathed brim.
"There is M. le Vicomte as usual, Madame, and Mme. la Comtesse de Maillé, who, learning that Madame was but now awakened, told me that she would wait whilst I inquired if Madame would see her."
"Good Heavens! what an hour to come," said the lady, with a peevish air.
"Madame la Comtesse seemed much moved. One would say something had occurred," said Jeanne.
The Marquise raised her head sharply.
"—And you stand chattering there? Just Heaven! The trial that it is to have an imbecile about one! The glass quickly, and the rouge, and the lace for my head. No, not that rouge—the new sort that Isidore brought yesterday;—arrange these two curls—now a little powder. Fool! what powder is this?"
"Madame's own," submitted Jeanne meekly.
The suffering lady raised herself and dealt the girl a sounding box on the ear.
"Idiot! did I not tell you I had tired of the perfume, and that in future the white lilac powder was the only one I would use? Did I not tell you?"
"Yes, Madame"—but there was a spark beneath the waiting-maid's discreetly dropped lids.
The Marquise de Montargis sat bolt upright, and contemplated her reflection in the wide silver mirror which Jeanne was steadying. Her passion had brought a little flush to her cheeks, and she noted approvingly that the colour became her.
"Put the rouge just here, and here, Jeanne," she ordered, her anger subsiding;—then, with a fresh outburst—"Imbécile, not so much! One does not have the complexion of a milkmaid when one is in bed with the migraine; just a shade here now, a nuance. That will do; go and bring them in."
She drew a rose-coloured satin wrap about her, and posed her head, in its cloud of delicate lace, carefully. Her bed was as gorgeous as it well might be. Long curtains of rosy brocade fell about it, and a coverlid of finest needlework, embroidered with bunches of red and white roses on a white satin ground, was thrown across it. The carved pillars showed cupids pelting one another with flowers plucked from the garlands that wreathed their naked chubbiness.
Madame de Montargis herself had been a beauty for twenty years, but a life of light pleasures, and a heart incapable of experiencing more than a momentary emotion had combined to leave her face as unlined and almost as lovely as when Paris first proclaimed her its reigning queen of beauty.
She was eminently satisfied with her own looks as she turned languidly on her soft pillows to greet her friends.
Mme. de Maillé bent and embraced her; M. le Vicomte Sélincourt stooped and kissed her gracefully extended hand. Jeanne brought seats, and after a few polite inquiries Mme. de Maillé plunged into her news.
"Ma chère amie!" she exclaimed, "I come to tell you the good news. My daughter and her husband have reached England in safety." Tears filled her soft blue eyes, and she raised them to the ceiling with a gesture that would have been affected had her emotion been less evidently sincere.
"Ah! chère Comtesse, a thousand felicitations!"
"My dear, I have been on thorns, I have not slept, I have not eaten, I have wept rivers, I have said more prayers in a month than my confessor has ever before induced me to say in a year. First I thought they would be stopped at the barriers, and then—then I pictured to myself a hundred misfortunes, a thousand inconveniences! I saw my Adèle ill, fainting from the fatigues of the road; I imagined assaults of brigands, shipwrecks, storms—in short, everything of the most unfortunate—ah! my dear friends, you do not know what a mother suffers—and now I have the happiness of receiving a letter from my dearest Adèle—she is well; she is contented. They have been received with the greatest amiability, and, my friends, I am too happy."
"And your happiness is that of your friends," bowed the Vicomte.
Mme. de Montargis' congratulations were polite, if a trifle perfunctory. The convenances demanded that one should simulate an interest in the affairs of one's acquaintances, but in reality, and at this hour of the day, how they did bore one! And Marie de Maillé, with her soft airs, and that insufferable Adèle of hers, whom she had always spoilt so abominably. It was a little too much! One had affairs of one's own. With the fretful expression of half an hour before she drew a letter from beneath her pillow.
"I too have news to impart," she said, with rather a pinched smile. "News that concerns you very closely, M. le Vicomte," and she fixed her eyes on Sélincourt.
"That concerns me?"
"But yes, Monsieur, since what concerns Mademoiselle your betrothed must concern you, and closely, as I said."
"Mademoiselle my betrothed, Mlle. de Rochambeau!" he cried quickly. "Is she then ill?"
Mme. de Montargis smiled maliciously.
"Hark to the anxious lover! But calm yourself, my friend, she is certainly not ill, or she would not now be on her way to Paris."
"To Paris?"
"That, Monsieur, is, I believe, her destination."
"What? She is coming to Paris now?" inquired Mme. de Maillé with concern.
The Marquise shrugged her shoulders.
"It is very inconvenient, but what would you?" she said lightly; "as you know, dear friend, she was betrothed to M. le Vicomte when she was a child. Then my good cousin, the Comte de Rochambeau, takes it into his virtuous head that this world, even in his rural retreat, is no longer good enough for him, and follows Madame, his equally virtuous wife, to Paradise, where they are no doubt extremely happy. Until yesterday I pictured Mademoiselle almost as saintly and contented with the holy Sisters of the Grace Dieu Convent, who have looked after her for the last ten years or so. Then comes this letter; it seems there have been riots, a château burned, an intendant or two murdered, and the good nuns take advantage of the fact that the steward of Rochambeau and his wife are making a journey to Paris to confide Mademoiselle to their care, and mine. It seems," she concluded, with a little laugh, "that they think Paris is safe, these good nuns."
"Poor child, poor child!" exclaimed Mme. de Maillé in a distressed voice; "can you not stop her, turn her back?"
The Marquise laughed again.
"Dear friend, she is probably arriving at this minute. The Sisters are women of energy."
"At