“No more than you,” he said. “You are welcome to your plot for me.”
Her eyes rather than her lips questioned him.
“Because,” said he, “I am convinced there is nothing to find out; and you will be occupied in hunting a chimera when you might be more mischievously engaged elsewhere.”
She nodded a great number of times. The sweat stood on her forehead.
“You had no thought to interfere?” she said. “Vous êtes à plaindre. I might have left you alone after all. But I dreaded you would stand by, and comprehend, and upset my plans, did I find a sujet fitting to my pu-repus.”
“Indeed, you had no reason to fear, madame. I am not so attached to my uncle’s company as that I should have been tempted to linger in it beyond the term prescribed by etiquette; and this time, be assured, I found in it no additional attraction.”
She made a deprecating motion with her shoulders, then seated herself again—but away from the bed—as if in exhaustion.
“At least,” she murmured, “I have been your camarade de chambre. And it seem I have nurse a viper in my bosom.”
Ned could only bow to this quite typically French example of moral obliquity.
“You think the devil hath instructed me, or that I am the devil,” he said. “It is not so, madame. I have lately been in Paris. I have kept my eyes and my ears open. Moreover, I happen to have come across Mademoiselle Lambertine—to have heard her story—to have known how she contemplated a descent on England. Add to this that, looking from the window some hours ago, I saw the girl (‘parmi d’autres paons tout fier se panada’—you know the fable, madame?) walking in your company; add that the public generally hath an interest in the Chevalier d’Eon’s reputation, and I, at least, in that of my uncle; add, perhaps, that a sick man’s brain is abnormally acute, especially when exercised over the causes predisposing to his malady; add that I have revolved these matters in my head as I lay here, and pieced them together in the manner presented to you, and upon my honour I think I have afforded you the full explanation.”