Then she became grave again.
"My father shall arrange everything this evening," she said, with a proud toss of her head. "To-morrow you may command, but to-night you shall remain a suppliant; grant me, I pray you, this fond little gratification of my overburdened vanity. Ask me again to grant your request, to be the means of satisfying your ambition. Put it into words, Gaston, tell me what it is you want!" she insisted, with a pretty touch of obstinacy; "it is my whim, and remember I am still the arbiter of your fate."
"On my knees, my queen," he said, curbing his impatience at her childish caprice; and, striving to hide the note of triumph in his voice, he put both knees to the ground and bent his head in supplication. "I crave of your bountiful graciousness to accord me the power to rule France by virtue of my office as Chief Comptroller of her revenues."
"Your desire is granted, sir," she said with a final assumption of pride; "the last favour I shall have the power to bestow I now confer on you. To-morrow I abdicate," she continued, with a strange little sigh, half-tearful, half-joyous, "to-morrow I shall own a master. M. le Comte de Stainville, Minister of the Exchequer of France, behold your slave, Lydie, bought this night with the priceless currency of your love! Oh, Gaston, my lord, my husband!" she said, with a sudden uncontrollable outburst of tears, "be a kind master to your slave—she gives up so much for your dear sake!"
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST TRICK
A shrill laugh suddenly broke on their ears. So absorbed had Lydie been in her dream that she had completely forgotten the other world, the one that laughed and talked, that fought and bickered on the other side of the damask curtain which was the boundary of her own universe.
Gaston de Stainville, we may assume, was not quite so unprepared for interruption as the young girl, for even before the shrill laugh had expended itself, he was already on his feet, and had drawn the damask curtain back again, interposing the while his broad figure between Lydie d'Aumont and the unwelcome intruder on their privacy.
"Ah! at last you are tracked to earth, mauvais sujet," said Mme. de Pompadour, as soon as the Comte de Stainville stood fully revealed before her. "Faith! I have had a severe task. His Majesty demanded your presence a while ago, sir, and hath gone to sleep in the interval of waiting. Nay! nay! you need make neither haste nor excuses. The King sleeps, Monsieur, else I were not here to remind you of duty."
She stood at the bottom of the steps looking up with keen, malicious eyes at Gaston's figure framed in the opening of the alcove, and peering inquisitively into the sombre recesses, wherein already she had caught a glimpse of a white satin skirt and the scintillation of many diamonds.