“Thank you, Monsieur,” said Lucienne shyly; “but I shall be tiring your patience, and, besides, we had your interesting story. . . . Still, there are one or two questions. . . .” There were a hundred; would she have time to ask them? Surely, since one of her ghosts was laid, laid by the letter. Gilbert had not interpreted her swoon as she had feared; had he done so, he could never have written like that. The secret was still safe, thank God!
. . . Was it she, afterwards wondered Trenchard, who had withdrawn him from the rest, or had he led her apart? Perhaps it was the others who had melted tactfully away. At any rate, he soon found himself, by no means to his displeasure, pacing up and down the bowling-green alone with this beautiful creature in her clinging white and her large black hat.
“And now I want to hear about M. de Saint-Ermay,” she said in a light tone, after a few questions duly answered about her betrothed. “I know him very well. He was not badly hurt, I hope?”
And Trenchard had no idea that, under the filmy scarf which floated about her in so graceful a manner, her hands were gripped together till the nails dinted the flesh.
“No, I suppose not,” he answered a little doubtfully; “otherwise he could not have ridden so far. But perhaps that was his pluck. He looked deuced bad at one time.”
The girl put up a hand to the ribbon at her throat, and he wondered why women could not leave their fallals alone. The brooch on the velvet was not unfastened.
“I didn’t quite understand how he got this stab I spoke of,” continued Trenchard after this reflection. “It was in some brawl at an inn, I believe. Does not M. de Château-Foix mention it? Oh, I beg your pardon!” he interrupted himself in confusion; “I had no intention of asking what was in your letter.”
“He doesn’t say anything about it,” said the girl, and her voice, so light a moment ago, was charged with emotion of some sort. “And I wondered . . . I mean I thought . . . you see I have known M. de Saint-Ermay for a great many years . . .”
Her distress was patent now, and a momentary speculation shot through Trenchard’s mind. He suddenly felt paternal.
“I quite understand your very natural anxiety, Mademoiselle,” he said kindly. “Shall we sit down for a moment, and I will tell you everything that I can remember about the Vicomte.”