“What do you mean?”
Saint-Péray’s face was grown suddenly a little white and stern.
“We are blood-brothers,” answered Cartouche, quietly; “comrades of a very recent sentiment. I honour the tie, despite—I say despite—an older and, to me, more natural one. I mean no reflection upon anything but the blindness of two simplicities, living, privately as they suppose, in a little-high paradise of their own. Will you not be satisfied with a hint? Will you not believe in its sincerity, though I tell you that I should profit personally by its acceptance by you? You have chosen to take me on trust. I choose to vindicate that confidence by assuring you that my patron di Rocco has spoiled more idylls in his time than I can tell. He is in the way to ruin yet another, this time by the Church’s sanction; and his arguments, from the worldly point of view, are overwhelming.”
Saint-Péray was like a ghost now.
“Speak plain, brother,” he whispered; “or rather, answer only. Is the Marquess a suitor for the hand of Mademoiselle de France? Is that what you mean?”
Cartouche stepped back and nodded.
“He is an accepted suitor, Louis-Marie.”
The young man dropped his head with a shudder, as if he had been stabbed. But in a moment he looked up again, pale and trembling.
“So vile!” he said hoarsely. “She’s soiled in his mere thought! Gaston! My God! it must not be; it—”
He checked himself suddenly, gazed a troubled moment into the other’s face, then turned and went quickly up the hill. As soon as the mist had hidden him, Cartouche followed easily in his steps.