'What matter? There is naught so glorious as scars on a soldier's face. When I was a child I once saw the Duc de Guise—le Balafré! With that great cut across his cheek, he was still the most notable man in a room filled to overflowing with clever, brave and handsome men!'
'But—but, Madame, Monseigneur is also pock-marked. Yes, that's it! Pock-marked! An illness contracted in early childhood—Madame understands?'
'I do,' she replied with a little sigh of sympathy, and looked with those enchanting blue eyes of hers straight on poor Gilles. 'I do. It is very sad.'
'Very sad indeed, Madame.'
'Scarred and pock-marked. No wonder Monseigneur is shy to show his face. But no matter,' she continued gaily. 'He hath such a lovely voice, and oh! such beautiful hands! Slender and full of nerve and power! I always take note of hands, Messire,' she said with well-feigned ingenuousness. 'They indicate a man's character almost more than his face. Do you not think, so too?'
'I—Madame—that is——'
Gilles had, quite instinctively, drawn the lace of his sleeve over his left hand, even while Madame still looked at him with that tantalizing glance which had the effect of turning his brain to putty and his knees to pulp. Now she laughed—that merry, rippling laugh of hers—and I do verily assure you that the poor man was on the verge of making a complete fool of himself. Indeed, it were difficult to say whether or no the next second would have witnessed his complete surrender to Jacqueline's magic charm, his total loss of self-control and the complete downfall of Madame la Reyne de Navarre's cherished plan, for poor Gilles had lost consciousness of every other feeling and thought save that of a wild longing to fall on his knees and to kiss the tiny foot which peeped beneath the hem of that exquisite woman's gown, a wild longing, too, to hold out his arms and to fold her to his breast, to kiss her hair, her eyes, her lips, that tiny mole which had wrought the whole mischief with his soul. For the moment he forgot his past life, his present position, the Duc d'Anjou and Madame la Reyne: he had forgotten that he was a penniless adventurer, paid to play an unworthy trick upon this innocent girl, sworn to infamy on pain of greater infamy still! He had forgotten everything save that she was adorable and that an altogether new and ardent love had taken possession of his soul.
Of a truth it is impossible for a prosy chronicler to state definitely what might have happened then, if Monseigneur the governor had not chosen that very moment for coming out of his room and walking down the corridor, at one end of which Gilles was standing spell-bound before the living presentment of his dream of long ago. He heard Monseigneur's heavy footstep, pulled himself vigorously together, and with an impatient gesture which was habitual to him, he passed his left hand slowly across his forehead.
When he looked on Jacqueline again she was staring at him with an expression that appeared almost scared and wholly bewildered, and with a strange, puzzled frown upon her smooth forehead. For the space of a second or two it seemed as if she wanted to say something, then held back the words. After a slight hesitation, however, she finally went forward a step or two to meet her guardian, without looking again on Gilles.
'I was glad,' she said quietly to d'Inchy, 'to have had an opportunity of seeing Messire de Crohin and of begging him to offer to Monseigneur le Prince de Froidmont, his master, my sincere regrets for what occurred last night.'