D’Aubray was on the point of drinking when, with a shriek, the Marchioness dashed the goblet from his hand, and it fell shivered on the floor.
‘What means this?’ said her father passionately. ‘Are you mad, madame?’
‘Nay,’ interrupted Sainte-Croix. ‘Apparently, Madame la Marquise has no desire to see me a better or a wiser man. Ah these women!’ he added, in a half-aside tone to D’Aubray, and shrugging his shoulders. ‘Allons, monsieur!’ then, as if suddenly recollecting something, he continued, ‘The staircase is guarded, I presume. You are too experienced a magistrate to neglect every precaution.’
Monsieur d’Aubray bowed.
‘Then, will you give me a moment alone with your daughter?’ asked Sainte-Croix. ‘On my honour, I will not abuse it.’
D’Aubray paused; but after a minute’s thought, replied—
‘You have behaved better than I expected, Monsieur de Sainte-Croix. I grant your request.’ And so saying he quitted the apartment.
As he left the boudoir the Marchioness gazed wildly and inquiringly at Gaudin, who, only whispering in her ear—‘Fool! you have thrown away a chance to-night that may never occur again’—threw open the window of the entresol, and, after a careful look, continued, in a low tone—‘As I expected, the court is empty.’
Then with a sign that checked the Marchioness, who was apparently on the point of flinging her arms about his neck, he quickly stepped from the window, and, aided by the trellis-work and ornaments of the intercolumnar architecture of the hôtel, descended easily and safely to the ground. A glance at the porte-cochère, which was open, showed him a fiacre in waiting, with two exempts, who guarded the porch with their halberts. Wrapping his cloak round his left arm, and drawing his sword, with a spring he was under the shade of the archway almost before the sentinel’s attention was awakened. Then, receiving on his cloaked arm the ill-directed blow of the one, he ran the other through the body, and springing over him was in the street before the alarm was given.
He sped along, and was turning the corner of the Rue Neuve St. Paul, when someone suddenly sprang from a doorway upon him, and then, being borne down by his impetuous rush, still clung round his body and effectually hampered his progress. With curses he strove to free his sword-arm, and would soon have rid himself of his assailant had not the archers, who were in chase, at that moment arrived to take their prisoner from the clutches of his captor, who was neither more nor less than Benoit, our friend the mountebank of the Carrefour du Châtelet, who, at the termination of an adventure to be hereafter explained, had tracked Sainte-Croix to the Hôtel d’Aubray, and remained crouched in a doorway of the Rue St. Paul until the arrival of the archers.