The Grey Cloak Part 45

"Her name I can not tell you, Paul."

"Can not? Why not 'will not'?"

"Will not, then. I have given my promise."

"Have I ever kept a secret from you, Victor?"

"One."

"Name it."

"That mysterious mademoiselle whom you call Diane. You have never even told me what she looks like."

"I could not if I tried. But this woman in the mask; at least you might tell me what she has done."

"Politics. Conspiracy, like misery, loves company. . . . Who has been burning paper?" sniffing.

"Burning paper?"

"Yes; and here's the ash. You've been burning something?"

"Not I, lad," with an abrupt laugh. "Hang it, let us go and eat."

"Yes; I am anxious to know why Monsieur le Marquis is here."

"And the burgundy; it will be like old times." There was sweat on the Chevalier's forehead, and he drew his sleeve across it.

From an obscure corner of the council chamber the figure of a man emerged. He walked on tiptoe toward the table. The black ash on the table fascinated him. For several moments he stared at it.

"'I kiss your handsome grey eyes a thousand times'," he said, softly.

He touched the ash with the tip of his finger, and the feathery particles sifted about, as if the living had imparted to the inanimate the sense of uneasiness. "For a s.p.a.ce I thought he would kiss her. In faith, there is more to Monsieur du Cevennes than I had credited to his account. It takes power, in the presence of that woman, to resist the temptation to kiss her. But here's a new element, a new page which makes interesting reading."

The man twirled the ends of his mustache.

"What a curious game of chess life is! Here's a simple play made complicated. How serenely I moved toward the coveted checkmate, to find a castle towering in the way! I came in here to await young Montaigne. He fails to appear. Chance brings others here, and lo! it becomes a new game. And D'Herouville will be out of hospital to-morrow or next day. Quebec promises to become as lively as Paris. Diane, he called her. What is her object in concealing her name? By all the gargoyles of Notre Dame, but she would lure a bishop from his fish of a Friday!"

He gathered up a pinch of the ash and blew it into the air.

"Happily the poet smelt nothing but paper. Lockets and love-letters; and D'Herouville and I for cutting each other's throats! That is droll. . . . My faith, I will do it! It will be a tolerably good stroke. 'I kiss your handsome grey eyes a thousand times'! Chevalier, Chevalier! Dip steel into blood, and little comes of it; but dip steel into that black liquid named ink, and a kingdom topples. She is to become a nun, too, she says. I think not."

It was the Vicomte d'Halluys; and when, shortly after this soliloquy, Montaigne came in, he saw that the vicomte was smiling and stabbing with the tip of his finger some black ash which sifted about on the table.

CHAPTER XX

A DEATH WARRANT OR A MARRIAGE CONTRACT

"Well, Gabrielle," said Anne, curiously, "what do you propose to do?"

Madame went to the window; madame stared far below the balcony at the broad river which lay smooth and white in the morning suns.h.i.+ne; madame drummed on the window-casing.

"It is a mare's nest," she replied, finally.

"First of all, there is D'Herouville. True, he is in the hospital,"

observed Anne, "but he will shortly become an element."

Madame shrugged.

"There's the vicomte, for another."

Madame spread the most charming pair of hands.

"And the poet," Anne continued.

Madame tucked away a rebel curl above her ear.

"And last, but not least, there's the Chevalier du Cevennes. The governor was very kind to permit you to remain incognito."

Madame's face became animated. "What an embarra.s.sing thing it is to be so plentifully and frequently loved!"

"If only you loved some one of these n.o.ble gentlemen!"

"D'Herouville, a swashbuckler; D'Halluys, a gamester; Du Cevennes, a fop. Truly, you can not wish me so unfortunate as that?"

"Besides, Monsieur du Cevennes does not know nor love you."

"I suppose not. How droll it would be if I should set about making him fall in love with me!--to bring him to my feet and tell him who I am--and laugh!"

"I should advise you not to try it, Gabrielle. He might become formidable. Are you not mischief endowed with a woman's form?"

"A mare's nest it is, truly; but since I have entered it willingly . . ."

"Well?"

"I shall not return to France on the Henri IV," determinedly.

"But Du Cevennes and the others?"

"I shall avoid Monsieur du Cevennes; I shall laugh in D'Herouville's face; the vicomte will find me as cold and repelling as that iceberg which we pa.s.sed near Acadia."

"And Monsieur de Saumaise?" Anne persisted.

"Well, if he wishes it, he may play Strephon to my Phyllis, only the idyl must go no further than verses. No, Anne; his is a brave, good heart, and I shall not play with it. I am too honest."

"Well, at any rate, you will not become dull while I am on probation.

And you will also become affiliated with the Ursulines?"