"Stay, you wore a captain's uniform then, in the Queen's Light Horse Guards, so badly cut up at Fontenoy?"
"Were you in that battle, too?" jeered the baron.
"No, I was dead at that time," replied the stranger, calmly.
The baron stared, Andrea shuddered, and Nicole made the sign of the cross.
"To resume the subject, I recall you clearly now, as you held your horse and the duke's while he fought. I went up to you for an account and you gave it. They called you the Little Chevalier. Excuse me not remembering before, but thirty years change a man. To the health of Marshal Richelieu, my dear baron!"
"But, according to this, you would be upward of fifty."
"I am of the age to have witnessed that affair."
The baron dropped back in the chair so vexed that Nicole could not help laughing. But Andrea, instead of laughing, mused with her looks on the mysterious guest. He seemed to await this chance to dart two or three flaming glances at her, which thrilled her like an electrical discharge. Her arms stiffened, her neck bent, she smiled against her will on the hypnotizer, and closed her eyes. He managed to touch her arm, and again she quivered.
"Do you think I tell a fib in asserting I was at Philipsburg?" he demanded.
"No, I believe you," she replied with a great effort.