"Father!" she said in a scarce audible murmur.
"Yes, my dear. What is it?"
"I don't know. I—I have been much troubled of late. I do not think that my perceptions are perhaps as keen as they were—and as you say, this matter of the Stuart Prince has weighed heavily on my mind. Therefore, will you forgive me, dear, if—if I ask you a question which may sound undutiful, disloyal to you?"
"Of course I will forgive you, dear," he said, after a slight moment of hesitation. "What is it?"
He had pulled himself together, and now met his daughter's glance with sufficient firmness, apparently to reassure her somewhat, for she said more quietly:
"Will you give me your word of honour that you personally know of no act of treachery which may be in contemplation against the man who trusts in the honour of France?"
Her glowing eyes rested upon his; they seemed desirous of penetrating to the innermost recesses of his soul. M. le Duc d'Aumont tried to bear the scrutiny without flinching but he was no great actor, nor was he in the main a dishonourable man, but he thought his daughter unduly chivalrous, and he held that political considerations were outside the ordinary standards of honour and morality.
Anyway he could not bring himself to give her a definite reply; her hand still grasped his wrist—he took it in his own and raised it to his lips.
"My father!" she pleaded, her voice trembling, her eyes still fixed upon him, "will you not answer my question?"
"It is answered, my dear," he replied evasively. "Do you think it worthy of me—your father—to protest mine honesty before my own child?"