And she uttered the last words in a tone of well-acted despondency, as she prepared to depart.
‘Stay, Marie!’ cried Gaudin. ‘You have said that your brothers are at Offemont; who else have you to dread? There is a réunion of all the best that Paris contains of life and revelry in the Rue des Mathurins this evening. You will go with me?’
‘It would be madness, Gaudin. The city would ring with the scandal to-morrow morning.’
‘You can mask,’ returned Sainte-Croix, ‘and so will I. I shall be known to all I care about, and those I can rely on. Marie! you will come?’
He drew a visor from his cloak as he spoke, and held it towards the Marchioness. The necessity for sudden concealment in the affairs of gallantry of the time made such an article part of the appointments of both sexes.
Marie appeared to waver for an instant; but Gaudin seized her hands and whispered a few low, but intense and impassioned words closely in her ear, as though he now mistrusted the very air that, damp and thickened, clung around them. She pulled the white hood over her face, and taking his arm, they quitted the dismal chamber in which this strange interview had taken place.
No notice was taken of them as they left the hospital. The porter was half-asleep in his huge covered settle, still holding the cord of the door in his hand, and he pulled it open mechanically as they passed. On reaching the open space of the Parvis Notre Dame, Sainte-Croix hailed a voiture de remise—a clumsy, ill-fashioned thing, but still answering the purpose of those who patronised it, more especially as there was but a small window on either side, and that of such inferior glass that the parties within were doubly private.
They crossed the river by the Petit Pont, and proceeded first to the Rue des Bernardins, where Sainte-Croix’s apartments were situated. Here the Marchioness left the dress of the sisterhood, in which she had visited the hospital, and appeared in her own rich garments; the other having been merely a species of domino with which she had veiled her usual attire. The coach then went on by the Rue des Noyers towards the hôtel indicated by Gaudin.
‘This is a wild mad action, Gaudin,’ said the Marchioness. ‘If it should be discovered, I shall be indeed lost.’
‘There is no chance of recognition,’ replied Sainte-Croix, as he assisted his companion to fasten on her mask. ‘No one has tracked us.’