“And have you a bad one, Monsieur?” asked Jeanne de Maisonfleur. “I should not have suspected it.”
“You have pardoned me, then, my little exhibition of it a moment ago. You are very generous, Mademoiselle. May I not do something to show my gratitude—hold this for you, for instance?” He took up an unwound skein of wool.
The girl paid no heed to his request. “There is an anger which does not claim forgiveness, but—admiration,” she said in a low voice. “If you have lost, Monsieur, you have at least fought for the cause which we, here, cannot aid, but for which we pray night and morning. If my poor father . . . if I had a brother . . .” She broke off there and threw a look at her father and Des Essars, but they were deep in converse on the other side of the hearth. “Monsieur, it is very bitter to lose before one has fought, and to suffer, but not for the cause for which one would so gladly bear anything!”
“Mademoiselle, I had guessed that,” said the Vicomte, dropping his voice also. “But since you give your prayers——”
“Ah, do you believe in prayers!” she retorted—and to tell the truth her interlocutor did not—“No! I think Heaven is deaf—to us, at least. Have you not had some one to pray for you and for France, and yet you are here . . . And France . . . where is she going? And tell me,” she went on, without giving him time to reply, “what was M. des Essars saying to you just now?”
Louis looked down at the long skein of coarse wool still lying across his palm. “M. des Essars and I were making up our old quarrel,” he said at length. “How does one undo the end of this thing, Mademoiselle?—for I insist on holding it for you.”
The girl searched his face with her tragic eyes. “You will not tell me. . . . Then I know!”
Louis was still holding out the skein, smiling. “I shall have time for this,” he said gently.
She took it mechanically, her eyes still fixed on his; then, without a word, steadied perhaps by his own self-command, she began to unfasten the end.
“You are very kind, M. de Saint-Ermay,” came the Chevalier’s voice. “Are you sure that my daughter is not trespassing unwarrantably on your good nature?”