He should have known, he should have guessed, and now she hated him for his thoughts of her; she who had kept herself untainted in the midst of the worst corruption that ever infested a Court, whose purity of motives, whose upright judgments had procured her countless enemies amongst the imbecile and the infamous, she to be asked and begged to be loyal and to despise treachery!
Nay, she was too proud now to explain. An explanation would seem like a surrender, an acknowledgment—par Dieu of what? and certainly a humiliation.
According to milor, her husband, was there not one single upright and loyal soul in France except his own? No honour save that of his own name?
She laughed suddenly, laughed loudly and long. Manlike, he did not notice the forced ring of that merriment. He had blundered, of course, but this he did not know. In the simplicity of his heart he thought that she would have been ready to understand, that she would have explained and then agreed with him as to the best means of throwing the nefarious proposal back into the King's teeth.
At her laugh he sprang to his feet; every drop of blood seemed to have left his cheeks, which were now ashy pale.
"Nay, milor," she said with biting sarcasm, "but 'tis a mountain full of surprises that you display before my astonished fancy. Who had e'er suspected you of so much eloquence? I vow I do not understand how your lordship could have seen so much of my doings just now, seeing that at that moment you had eyes and ears only for Irène de Stainville."
"Mme. de Stainville hath naught to do with the present matter, Madame," he rejoined, "nor with my request for an explanation from you."
"I refuse to give it, milor," she said proudly, "and as I have no wish to spoil or mar your pleasures, so do I pray you to remember our bond, which is that you leave me free to act and speak, aye, and to guide the destinies of France if she have need of me, without interference from you."
And with that refinement of cruelty of which a woman's heart is sometimes capable at moments of acute crises, she carefully folded the English letter and once more slipped it into the bosom of her gown. She vouchsafed him no other look, but gathering her skirts round her she turned and left him. Calm and erect she walked the whole length of the room and then passed through another doorway finally out of his sight.