Louis shook his head. “Like all your sex, you must be convinced, I see, by ocular demonstration. How can you say that I am not fit for anything?” He got up suddenly from the chair, and the shawl which adorned his shoulders slipped to the ground, revealing the fact that his left arm was not only supported in a sling but was bound to his side, a precaution of his nurse’s to prevent his using his shoulder. He advanced laughing on her, a slim boyish figure in shirt and breeches. “I swear I’ll kiss you if you don’t fetch my cousin!” said he.
Madame Geffroi put up her hands with a squeal, and backed rapidly from the reach of the one effective arm. “You are a graceless young scamp!” she said from the door, but she was laughing too. “You shall have your cousin, then!”
Louis sauntered back to his chair and flung himself down in it, smiling, but the look of amusement faded rapidly off his face. Madame Geffroi’s question had set his heart aching. More than once in the past, when he had gone down to Chantemerle, Lucienne had been there awaiting him with the rest on the terrace—a child, it is true, much younger, scarcely noticed, and yet the same Lucienne. Those had been happy days; all the happier that they were not poisoned by a passion which had no right to existence, when he was a thoughtless boy and she a child playmate, nothing more. Now she would never wait for him anywhere, for if ever the Fates sent her back to live in security at Chantemerle, the old house could never see him there again. . . . Why had he not gone with her to England as Gilbert had suggested? Why had he acted the virtuous friend at his parting with her the other day? Why, in God’s name, had he of all people taken up that always ridiculous rôle? . . . Since that farewell he had known that she loved him distractedly, but the knowledge, with all that it contained of solace, only served to make his own conduct the more bitter in the mouth. With such a proof of her love as she had then given him, what might their life have been had their lots fallen otherwise—yes, even if he had but plucked his hour when it blossomed to his hand! . . . It was the most sickening folly. He had wrecked his happiness and hers, forsooth, for Gilbert’s—for the cold-blooded Gilbert, who regarded her, most probably, as honoured by her betrothal, and him as a worthless trifler. And he had taken this senseless, unnatural path, in the first place, because Gilbert trusted him. “I wish to the devil he did not!” he muttered fiercely—and knew not that his wish was already granted. “The whole thing is too damnable!” He was kicking angrily at the fallen shawl when Gilbert came in, and could not, or did not try, to conceal his mood, but merely looked up and nodded at his cousin.
“So you are out of bed?” remarked the latter.
“Yes,” said Louis shortly. “I sent for you that we might make plans for to-morrow.”
“For to-morrow! Do you think that you——”
“Confound you!” broke out Louis irritably. “You are as bad as the old lady. I don’t say that I could walk far, but I can certainly ride. It is merely a question of getting horses.”
The Marquis shrugged his shoulders. “I perceive that you are really convalescent,” he observed. “Very well. But we shall have to obtain Madame Geffroi’s assistance; I don’t think it would be wise for one of us to go about them.”
“No, of course not,” agreed Louis. And going to the door he called for his hostess.
Madame Geffroi thought that horses of some kind could be procured, though they would probably not be good ones. But then the travellers would not want to make long stages at first, she added, looking warningly on Louis and almost threateningly on the Marquis. Resigning herself with her accustomed decision to the inevitable, she presumed that if they really meant to start early next morning, she had better take steps about the horses at once, upon which Louis called her an angel, and she left the room shaking her head.