“Come,” he said hoarsely; “you lent me the means to it—I owe this to you—I’ll not let you go now.”
All his tolerance, it seemed, was turned to hatred. He regarded the young man as the instrument, however contemptible, of his undoing. The worse for the poor tool of Fortune! He would have to act whipping-boy to her ladyship. And serve the weak creature right for his flaccidity. He sneered horribly at him.
“Faith’s dead in me,” he snarled. “You’ll have to serve her turn.”
Quite stunned and helpless, Saint-Péray let him lead him whither he would. As they crossed into the Via Seminario, a royal carriage, making for the Palace, was brought to a stand against a gabbling stream of pedestrians, and stopped across their very path. They faced direct into a window of it; and there inside was Yolande.
Pale, agitated, her Dresden-shepherdess eyes glanced to and fro, and, all in an instant, caught that vision of other two, other four, fixed upon them.
We’ve heard of faces stricken into stone before some Gorgon apparition. Love’s severed head converts to softer stuff. His art is the plastic art, and answers to his dead hauntings in features stiffening into wax.
So seemed Yolande’s features in that moment. Her breath hung suspended on her lips, the colour in her cheeks. She had procured Love’s death, and thus was Love revenged upon her. Like a thing of wax she confronted the sweet cruelty of his eyes.
There sat a thin grey gentleman by her side, of a very refined and arrogant mien. The Chevalier de France had never encountered Louis, nor Louis him. Suddenly the former projected his head from the window, and demanded in haughty tones the reason of the delay.
“Monsignore,” said a postillion, “it is the Lottery.”
The Chevalier sacre’d.