"My cousin De Rochambeau was crazy about her," reflected Mme. de Montargis; "he might have married anybody, and he chose an Irish girl without a sou. It was the talk of Paris at the time. He was the handsomest man at Court."
"And Aileen Desmond the loveliest girl," put in Mme. de Maillé thoughtlessly; then, observing her hostess's change of expression, she coloured, but continued—"They were not so badly matched, and," with a little sigh, "they were very happy. It was a real romance."
Mme. de Montargis' eyes flashed. Twenty years ago beautiful Aileen Desmond had been her rival at Court. Now that for quite a dozen years gossip had coupled her name with that of the Vicomte de Sélincourt, was Aileen Desmond's daughter to take her mother's place in that bygone rivalry?
Mme. de Maillé, catching her glance, wondered how it would fare with any defenceless girl who came between Laure de Montargis and her lover. She was still wondering whilst she made her farewells.
When M. le Vicomte had bowed her out he came moodily back to his place.
"It is very inconvenient, Madame," he said pettishly.
"You say so," returned the lady.
"Pardon, Madame, it was you who said so."
The Marquise laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh.
"Of course it was I," she cried. "Who else? It is hardly likely that M. le Vicomte finds a rich bride inconvenient."
Sélincourt's face changed a little, but he waved the words away.
"Mademoiselle is nothing to me," he asserted. "Chère amie, do you suspect, do you doubt the faithful heart which for years has beaten only for one beloved object?"
The lady pouted, but her eyes ceased to sparkle.
"And that object?" she inquired, with a practised glance.
"Angel of my life—need you ask?"
It was indeed unnecessary, since a very short acquaintance with this fervid lover was sufficient to assure any one that his devotion to himself was indeed his ruling and unalterable passion; perhaps the Marquise was aware of this, and was content to take the second, but not the third place, in his affections. She looked at him coquettishly.
"Ah," she said, "you mean it now, now perhaps, Monsieur, but when she comes, when you are married?"
"Eh, ma foi," and the Vicomte waved away his prospective marriage vows as lightly as if they were thistle-down, "one does not marry for love; the heart must be free, not bound—and where will the free heart turn except to the magnet that has drawn it for so long?"
Madame extended a white, languid hand, and Monsieur kissed it with more elegance than fervour. As he was raising his head she whispered sharply:
"The new cipher, have you got it?"
He bent lower, and kissed the fair hand again, lingeringly.
"It is here, and I have drafted the letter we spoke of; it must go this week."
"The Queen is well?"
"Well, but impatient for news. There is an Austrian medicine that she longs for."
"Chut! Enough, one is never safe."
"Adieu, then, m'amie."
"Adieu, M. le Vicomte."
Monsieur took his leave with an exquisite bow, and all the forms that elegance prescribed, and Madame lay back against her pillows with closed eyes, and the frown which she never permitted to appear in society. Jeanne threw a sharp glance at her as she returned from closing the door upon Sélincourt. Her ears had made her aware of whispering, and now her eyes showed her a small crumpled scrap of paper, just inside the ruelle of Madame's bed. A love-letter? Perhaps, or perhaps not. In any case the correspondence of the mistress is the perquisite of the maid, and as Jeanne came softly to the bedside she covered the little twisted note with a dexterous foot, and, bending to adjust the rose-embroidered coverlid, secured and hid her prize. In a moment she had passed behind the heavy curtains and was scanning it with a practised eye—an eye that saw more than the innocent-seeming figures with which the white paper was dotted. Jeanne had seen ciphers before, and a glance sufficed to show her the nature of this one, for at the foot of the draft was a row of signs and figures, mysterious no longer in the light of the key that stood beneath them. Apparently Jeanne knew something about secret correspondence too, for there in the shadow behind the curtain she nodded and smiled, and once even shook her fist towards the unconscious Marquise. Next moment she was again in evidence, and but for that paper tucked away inside her bodice she would have found her morning a hard one. Madame wished this, Madame wished that; Madame would have her forehead bathed, her feet rubbed, a thousand whims complied with and a thousand fancies gratified. Soft-voiced and deft, Jeanne moved incessantly to and fro on those small, neatly-shod feet, which she sometimes compared not uncomplacently with those of her mistress, until, at last, at the latter end of all conceivable fancies there came one for repose—the rosy curtains were drawn, and Jeanne was free.
Half an hour later a deftly-cloaked figure stood before a table at which a dark-faced man wrote busily—a paper was handed over, a password asked and given.
"Is it enough now?" asked Jeanne the waiting-maid. And the dark-faced man answered, without looking up, "It is enough—the cup is full."
CHAPTER II
A FORCED ENTRANCE
Mademoiselle de Rochambeau had been a week in Paris, but as yet she had tasted none of its gaieties—for gaieties there were still, even in these clouding days when the wind of destiny blew up the storm of the Terror. The King and Queen were prisoners in the Temple, many of the noblesse had emigrated, but what remained of the Court circles still met and talked, laughed, gamed, and flirted, as if there were no deluge to come. To-day Mme. de Montargis received, and Mlle. de Rochambeau, dressed by a Parisian milliner for the first time, was to be presented to her cousin's friends.
She had not even seen her betrothed as yet—that dim figure which she had contemplated for so many years of cloistered monotony, until it had become the model upon which her dreams and hopes were hung. Now that the opening of the door might at any moment reveal him in the flesh, the dreams wore suddenly thin, and she was conscious of an overpowering suspense. She hoped for so much, and all at once she was afraid. Husbands, to be sure, were not romantic, not the least in the world, and, according to the nuns, it would be the height of impropriety to wish that they should be. One married because it was the convenable thing to do, but to fall in love—fi donc, Mademoiselle, the idea! Aline laughed, for she remembered Sister Séraphine's face, all soft and shocked and wrinkled, and then in a minute she was grave again. Dreams may be forbidden, but when one is nineteen they have a way of recurring, and it is certain that Mlle. de Rochambeau's heart beat faster than Sister Séraphine would have approved, as she stood by Mme. de Montargis' gilded chair and heard the servant announce "M. le Vicomte de Sélincourt."
He kissed Madame's hand; and then hers. A sensation that was almost terror caught the colour from her face. Was this little, dark, bowing fop the dream hero? His eyes were like a squirrel's—black, restless, shallow—and his mouth displeased her. Something about its puckered outline made her recoil from the touch of it upon her hand, and the Marquise, glancing at her, saw all the young face pale and distressed. She smiled maliciously, and reflected on the folly of youth and the kind connivance