"Monseigneur," she said, "would be the first to bid you smother your regrets for the past, maman, and to concentrate your thoughts on the dangers that still lie ahead."
She was busy at a desk that stood open before her, glancing at a number of papers, classifying some, throwing a great number into the fire which crackled cheerfully in the hearth, whilst others she tied together and put into a small tin box that stood close to her hand.
"It was kind and gracious of Monseigneur," continued Madame la Marquise dolefully, "to think of sending me a courier when he must have been so busy with his preparations for his sudden departure. Oh, that departure!" she added, as once again tears of wrath as well as of sorrow welled up to her eyes. "The shame of it! The humiliation as well as the bitter, bitter disappointment!"
Constance de Plélan made no comment this time on her mother's lamentations. She had apparently completed the work on which she had been engaged, for now she rose, closed the desk and locking the small tin box with a key which she selected from a bunch at her belt she took it up under her arm. Then she turned to her mother:
"Will you tell me, maman," she said, "just what Monseigneur says in his letter?"
Constance stood there in the grey light of the winter afternoon, with the flicker of the firelight playing on her tall, graceful figure, her arm extended, holding the metal box, her small head carried with the stately dignity of a goddess.
"Those devils will be here directly," continued the girl; and as she spoke the delicate lines of her face were distorted by an expression of intense and passionate hatred. "But we are ready for them. I have only this box to put away in its usual hiding-place—after which, let them come!"
Mme. de Plélan again took up the letter, the perusal of which had caused her so much sorrow. It had arrived by courier a few minutes ago; now, at her daughter's request, she began to read it aloud:
"This is what Monseigneur the Bishop writes," she said. "'My dear friend, immediately on receipt of this missive, set to work at once to destroy any compromising papers you may have in the house. I have no doubt that the posse of police which has just ransacked my place will pay you a visit also. My friendship for you is well known, and your name may appear in one or two of the letters which those brutes have confiscated. Alas! the landing of Monsieur le Comte d'Artois on these shores has ended in disaster. The spies of the Corsican upstart were on his track from the first. They followed His Royal Highness to my Palace, kidnapped him as if he were a bale of goods and shipped him straight back to England. My life and liberty are, it seems, to be spared, but I have been ordered into exile at my château in the Dauphiné. God guard and preserve you all! We must wait for happier times!"
Constance said nothing for a moment or two. She stood staring into the fire, her lips tightly pressed.