'Very well!' he said. 'You may try. But understand,' he added inflexibly. 'If Monsieur—I mean, if M. le Prince de Froidmont does not accept your apology, if he demands your punishment, you leave Cambray to-night.'
'I understand, Monseigneur,' said de Landas simply.
'And if the Prince does accept your apology, and I do condone your offence this time, your punishment will be all the more severe if you transgress again. It would not be a sentence of expulsion then, but one of death. Now you may go!' he concluded curtly. 'My leniency in the future will depend upon your conduct.'
After which, he dismissed de Landas with a stiff inclination of the head, and the young Spaniard left the presence of the autocratic governor of Cambray with rage in his heart and a veritable whirlpool of conjectures, of surmises and of intrigues seething in his fertile brain.
II
But right through the wild medley of hypotheses which ran riot in de Landas' mind there raged also furious, unbridled wrath—wrath at his own humiliation, his own impotence—hatred against the man who had brought him to this pass, and mad, ungovernable jealousy whenever his thoughts turned to Jacqueline.
Somehow—it was only instinct, no doubt—he felt that all this pother about the masked stranger centred round the personality of Jacqueline. The first hint which Monseigneur had of last night's affray must of necessity have come from Jacqueline. She alone was there—varlets and wenches did not count—she alone could have a personal interest in putting Monseigneur on the scent.
A personal interest? De Landas' frown became dark and savage when first that possibility rose before his mind. He had ordered his servants, very curtly, to go and wait for him in the main entrance hall, for after his interview with the governor he felt the want of being alone for a few moments, to think over the situation as it so gravely affected him. He was in the same corridor where a couple of hours ago Jacqueline had waylaid and spoken with Messire Gilles de Crohin. On his right was the row of tall windows with their deep embrasures, which gave view upon the park. De Landas felt sick and fatigued, as much from choler and nerve-strain as from the effect of his wounds, and he sat down on one of the wide window-seats to think matters over.
A personal interest?
Yes! That was it. Jacqueline, capricious, hot-headed, impulsive, had been attracted by the mysterious personality of the stranger, and for the moment was forgetting the lover of her youth, the man who felt that he had an inalienable claim upon her allegiance. De Landas had heard rumours of a masked minstrel having serenaded Madame beneath her windows. Pierre, his own henchman, had received a broad hint to that effect from Nicolle, who was Madame's waiting-woman. Was it possible that the masked troubadour and the enigmatic Prince de Froidmont were one and the same person? and was it likely that Jacqueline's romantic fancy had been captured by his wiles?