Chapter LXIX.
Conversational.
Though Mordaunt had been so completely taken by surprise and had mounted the stairs in such utter confusion, when once seated he recovered himself, as it were, and prepared to seize any possible opportunity of escape. His eye wandered to a long stout sword on his flank and he instinctively slipped it around within reach of his right hand.
D’Artagnan was waiting for a reply to his remark and said nothing. Aramis muttered to himself, “We shall hear nothing but the usual commonplace things.”
Porthos sucked his mustache, muttering, “A good deal of ceremony to-night about crushing an adder.” Athos shrunk into his corner, pale and motionless as a bas-relief.
The silence, however, could not last forever. So D’Artagnan began:
“Sir,” he said, with desperate politeness, “it seems to me that you change your costume almost as rapidly as I have seen the Italian mummers do, whom the Cardinal Mazarin brought over from Bergamo and whom he doubtless took you to see during your travels in France.”
Mordaunt did not reply.
“Just now,” D’Artagnan continued, “you were disguised—I mean to say, attired—as a murderer, and now——”
“And now I look very much like a man who is going to be murdered.”
“Oh! sir,” said D’Artagnan, “how can you talk like that when you are in the company of gentlemen and have such an excellent sword at your side?”