"Indeed you are not!" said his elder, understanding nothing of his speech, but reading a very frenzy of desperation in his demeanour. He seized him by the shoulders. "You do not go into the house until you have explained yourself. Where have you been? Who is dying?"
"Let me go, curse you!" exclaimed Armand, struggling in his grip. Then the strength seemed suddenly to ebb from him. "It is Laurence, Madame de Vigerie," he gasped. "She was at the ball—I saw her myself; then she disappeared before I could speak to her ... and she was wearing my flowers ... do you hear, Emmanuel, she was wearing my flowers! Then I heard ... she was dying ... I went to her house ... I sat a long time on the steps ... they would not let me in ... then I came here ... she was wearing my roses ... and now she is dying——"
"Dying!" ejaculated his brother. "And at the ball! What——"
"The cholera!" said Armand in a choking voice.
"O my God!" He freed himself from Emmanuel's loosened hold, and throwing himself down on the steps lay there like one bereft of life, his face hidden.
So the pendent sword had descended! The cholera had been advancing on France for years; this, Carnival-tide, was then its chosen time of striking. The Marquis's first thought was of what was to come on Paris; his second, of the immediate future. If Horatia were to see Armand in this condition! ...
He bent over the huddled form, plucking it by the short velvet cloak whose flame-coloured lining showed pale in the faint light.
"Armand, get up! You must not give way like this. Come with me, and I will take you to our cousin's."
He dragged his brother, unresisting, to his feet, and piloted him out into the street, past the horrified concierge, and somehow, a little later, they found themselves at Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon's door. Prosper seemed to keep later hours than his secular kin, and they were admitted without difficulty. Armand wandered unsteadily to a chair and threw himself down in it, and at that moment the curtain at the end of the long room was pulled aside, and Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, looking startlingly tall in his long cassock, came out of what was, in effect, his private oratory.
"Who is that?" he asked in surprise, pointing to the white figure.