The Marquis stood still, collecting his thoughts. A moment or two ago Louis’ peril had sunk forgotten beneath his possible treachery. Now the full realisation of his imminent danger swept like the incoming tide over a shore of suspicion that would be bared again at ebb. The flood carried Château-Foix along with it. He summoned a passing vehicle, sprang in, and drove at once across the river to Madame d’Espaze’s house in the Rue de Tournon.
The rush of feeling had borne him up to the very door of the enchantress before he began to consider what he should say to her. Should he plead or threaten, argue or bribe? Not knowing the lady he concluded (perhaps not unwisely) that it was useless to arrange a plan of campaign until he had seen her, and rang the bell on this resolution.
Alas, Madame was not at home to any one. No, she had given positive orders. And then only did Gilbert realise that it was something late for a visit. Would she receive him to-morrow morning? Sped by a handsome gratuity, the lackey went back with the Marquis’ card. He returned to say that the Comtesse would gladly receive Monsieur at ten. With this consolation Gilbert, baffled, went slowly down the steps between the flowering shrubs and through the gay little courtyard out again into the street.
And gradually the tide began to ebb. There was nothing to be done till morning—nothing but think. Once back in his room at the hotel there seemed indeed to be every likelihood of his doing that till daybreak, the more so that a certain merciless clearness of vision was beginning to bathe past and present in a dreadful illumination. Everything was patent to him now. That he should not have known better! That he could have had the incredible folly to trust Louis near Lucienne; to believe that there was at least one woman in the world whom he would respect. Fool! it had probably made the prize but the more desirable!
The horrible source of light in Gilbert’s brain brought back incident after incident in the past, all pointing to the one goal. No sooner had one swept before him than another rushed upon its heels. “And I! and I!” they cried to him, ghosts of his unutterable folly, of Louis’ treachery, of Lucienne’s weakness. He had trusted so completely that a revulsion so complete stripped instantly every rag of faith from him, and left him naked to the storm. For a little while he was able to regard the event from almost an impersonal standpoint; then the kaleidoscope shifted, and his proud and writhing spirit beheld himself as the victim, laughed at, perhaps, or worse, pitied; till at last, passing by the image of Lucienne with averted face, his mind fixed on the thought of Louis in a passion of hatred. As yet he would not, could not examine her position; it was Louis who was guilty; it was Louis who had entrapped her; it was Louis, curse him, curse him!—with his beauty and his grace, his ready tongue, his gay smile, and just that reputation for gallantry likely to render him more attractive still.
And suddenly, as the bells of Notre Dame des Victoires behind the hotel chimed the quarter past nine, a thought, scarifying in its intensity, tore shuddering across the night of his mind. He had revenge in his very hands. He could leave Louis where he was—leave him to rot in the prison to which his philandering with another woman had brought him—leave him to be hanged on a lamp-post like the Marquis de Favras, to be torn in pieces like De Launay, to have his handsome, insolent head paraded along the streets on a pike point, like Foulon—like him, perhaps, with a wisp of grass between the lips which had lied and kissed. . . .
It was not at once that Gilbert realised to what voice he was listening. The shock of the image he had conjured up for himself told him. O God! was he like that! His head fell forward on his arms. . . .
Ten o’clock had struck before he lifted it. The bitter shame and conflict of that three-quarters of an hour had brought the pendulum back with a swing. What shadow of proof had he? Lucienne had been overwrought; how had he dared to think such a thing of her? It was a nightmare out of which he would awaken with the dawn.
But when the dawn came he had not awakened; only, haggard and doubt-ridden, he threw himself on his bed to gain a little respite ere he set out to play his last desperate stake for the life of the kinsman who had—or had not?—done him so foul an injury.