'And he e'en ordered Pierre to go and apologize most humbly to the stranger, who it seems is lodging in a very poor hostelry known as "Les Trois Rois," just close to the Porte Notre Dame.'
Jacqueline ostentatiously smothered a yawn.
'I think I'll go to bed now, Colle,' she said.
But Colle's tongue, once loosened, could not so easily be checked.
'Town gossip,' she went on with great volubility, 'has been busy with that stranger for the past two days. 'Tis said that he is styled Monseigneur le Prince de Froidmont; though what a prince should be doing in a shabby hostel in that squalid quarter of the city I, for one, do not know—nor why he should be going about masked and cloaked through the city in the guise of a vagabond.'
'Perhaps the vagabond is no prince after all,' suggested Jacqueline.
'That's what I say,' asserted Colle triumphantly. 'And that's what Pierre thought until Monseigneur told him that if he did not go at once and offer his humble apologies he surely would get a flogging, seeing that the Prince de Froidmont would actually be a guest at the banquet to-morrow, and would of a certainty complain to M. de Landas.'
'A guest at the banquet!' exclaimed Jacqueline involuntarily.'
'Aye!' assented Colle. 'Didst ever hear the like! But he must be a distinguished seigneur for all that, or Monseigneur would not bid him come.'
'No, I suppose not,' said Jacqueline with perfect indifference. 'The Prince de Froidmont?' she added with a little yawn. 'Is that his name?'