But Molyneux still held the gentlemen back. “One moment,” he cried.
“M. de Winterset,” said Beaucaire, “of what are you afraid? You calculate well. Beaucaire might have been belief—an impostor that you yourself expose'? Never! But I was not goin' reveal that secret. You have not absolve me of my promise.”
“Tell what you like,” answered the Duke. “Tell all the wild lies you have time for. You have five minutes to make up your mind to go quietly.”
“Now you absolve me, then? Ha, ha! Oh, yes! Mademoiselle,” he bowed to Lady Mary, “I have the honor to reques' you leave the room. You shall miss no details if these frien's of yours kill me, on the honor of a French gentleman.”
“A French what?” laughed Bantison.
“Do you dare keep up the pretense?” cried Lord Town brake. “Know, you villain barber, that your master, the Marquis de Mirepoix, is in the next room.”
Molyneux heaved a great sigh of relief. “Shall I—” He turned to M. Beaucaire.
The young man laughed, and said: “Tell him come here at once.
“Impudent to the last!” cried Bantison, as Molyneux hurried from the room.
“Now you goin' to see M. Beaucaire's master,” said Beaucaire to Lady Mary. “'Tis true what I say, the other night. I cross from Prance in his suite; my passport say as his barber. Then to pass the ennui of exile, I come to Bath and play for what one will. It kill the time. But when the people hear I have been a servant they come only secretly; and there is one of them—he has absolve' me of a promise not to speak—of him I learn something he cannot wish to be tol'. I make some trouble to learn this thing. Why I should do this? Well—that is my own rizzon. So I make this man help me in a masque, the unmasking it was, for, as there is no one to know me, I throw off my black wig and become myself—and so I am 'Chateaurien,' Castle Nowhere. Then this man I use', this Winterset, he—”