The contemptible, arrogant wretch!
He was still half sitting, half leaning against the edge of his bed, and staring straight out before him through the big bay window which gave on to the park, passively, gently, as if the matter had ceased to concern him, as if he were quite unconscious of the enormity of his action.
"A—a damned—what?—accursed!—what?——" stammered the King; "but, milor——"
"Nay, Sire, I pray you!" broke in a grave voice suddenly; "my lord seems to have angered your Majesty. Will you deign to explain?"
CHAPTER XV
DIPLOMACY
The buzz of talk was going on as loudly and incessantly as before. The whispered conversation around M. le Contrôleur's bedside had excited no violent curiosity. The first surprise occasioned by His Majesty's unparalleled condescension soon gave way to indifference; it was obvious that the King's assiduity beside the Minister of Finance was solely due to a more than normal desire for money, and these royal demands for renewed funds were too numerous to cause more than passing interest.
Eavesdropping was impossible without gross disrespect, the latter far more unpardonable than the most insatiable curiosity. Lydie alone, privileged above all, had apparently not heeded the barrier which isolated Louis XV, Pompadour and milor from the rest of the vast apartment, for she now stood at the foot of the bed—a graceful, imposing figure dressed in somewhat conventual gray, with one hand resting on the delicate panelling, her grave, luminous eyes fixed on the King's face.
Louis shook himself free from the stupor in which milor's unexpected words had plunged him. Surprise yielded now to vexation. Lydie's appearance, her interference in this matter, would be the final death-blow to his hopes. Those tantalizing millions had dangled close before his eyes, his royal hands had almost grasped them, his ears heard their delicious clink; milor's original attitude had brought them seemingly within his grasp. Now everything was changed. The whole affair would have to be argued out again at full length, and though le petit Anglais might prove amenable, Mme. Lydie was sure to be obdurate.
Louis XV scowled at the picture of youth and beauty presented by that elegant figure in dove-gray silk, with the proud head carried high, the unconscious look of power and of strength in the large gray eyes, so grave and so fixed. In his mind there had already flashed the thought that milor's sudden change of attitude—for it was a change, of that his Majesty had no doubt—was due to a subtle sense of fear which had made him conscious of his wife's presence, although from her position and his own he could not possibly have seen her approach.