Gilbert’s and the priest’s eyes met.
“Very well, I will let you go,” said the Marquis quietly. “Will you pick your men yourself? I know they will follow you. I will spare you twenty-five; take most—say eighteen—from the second floor.”
Louis saluted, smiling.
“And remember,” went on Château-Foix in an altered voice, “that there are occasions on which it is a man’s duty to get himself killed. . . . I do—I do not think that this is one of them.” He stopped suddenly with a catch of the breath and made a gesture to M. des Graves. “Give him your blessing,” he said.
Louis dropped to his knee, while the priest commended him to the care of his Maker. When he rose he caught at the hand just uplifted in benediction and kissed it. As he raised his eyes he saw Gilbert’s face. The next instant he had his hands on his cousin’s shoulders.
“I promise you—I promise I won’t get killed,” he said between jest and earnest, and Château-Foix took his head between his hands and kissed him on the forehead.
Ten minutes later Louis with his score of men had dashed into the dusk and the wind and the singing bullets.
The minute hand had made more than half the circuit of the Sèvres clock in the Marquise’s boudoir, the dusk had deepened to dark, the sound of firing had drifted away, before the tramp of feet sounded again outside the little pavilion door. Some one knocked vigorously with the hilt of a sword, and the old man waiting anxiously in the passage hastened to undo the bolts. His round of lantern light fell on a white scarf and a smiling mouth.
“God be thanked! You are safe, Monsieur le Vicomte!” he exclaimed in a grave voice, raising the lantern higher.