The other interrupted him with an odd laugh. “Pray don’t delude yourself into thinking my presence any protection! Good God! if any one could have been more helpless that day——” The Vicomte broke off, biting his lip.
“You refer to the 20th?” asked Château-Foix, surprised to see that light nature so moved. “Where was Lucienne? How much did she see?”
“She was with the Princess all the time. You can have no conception what it was like. Oh, she was safe enough—no one said a word to her—but still——” Saint-Ermay did not say to whom Lucienne owed her comparative immunity from insult, nor mention how, at a risk to his own life far greater than the danger to her sensibility, he had stood in front of her for two long hours, the only barrier between her and the mob that flowed through the Tuileries.
“You saw it too, then?”
“Unofficially, so to speak,” returned the Vicomte, with a curling lip. “I came in with the rabble. You know—or perhaps you do not know—that the King sent all us gentlemen out of the palace. On my soul, I would rather have died in the antechamber than have gone—we were enough, we could have held it—but”—he shrugged his shoulders—“the King wished it, and so, like thieves, we crept out by the postern gate in twos and threes. A fine experience for the remnants of the bodyguard!”
The Marquis looked at him in astonishment. Was this Louis, the trifler, the volatile, the easy-going? His gay indifference was dropped like a mask, his eyes were alight for a moment with a sombre fire, and in his voice surged a passion and a bitterness which, if ever he had believed his cousin capable of, Château-Foix had at least not believed he would ever allow himself to display.
“But you came back?” he asked curiously.
Louis nodded, and in a flash resumed his wonted outer self. “I came back,” he said in his ordinary tone. “By the way, I suppose the Princess has told you that, since Madame de Fontenelle is too old and infirm for the journey, she has procured an escort for Lucienne, in the person of a certain Madame Gaumont—unless indeed you mean to take her to England yourself?”
The change of subject was significant enough. Gilbert followed half unwillingly along the new track.
“No,” he said in answer to the last query, “I dare not spare the time to go to England now. Madame Elisabeth told me about this lady. She seems thoroughly to be trusted; don’t you think so?”