Valentine hastened down the nearest stairs. Better to get it over as soon as possible, the visit to that room, for it had to be gone through with, and she had no one but herself to thank for that fact.
She had come down a minor staircase which deposited her at some distance from her own quarters, and having arrived on the basement floor she began to run, for she was still as light-footed as a girl, and she had a constitutional dislike, for all her upbringing, to keeping people waiting. And thus, round a corner, she almost collided with a man hastening in the opposite direction. A second of stupefaction, and she saw that it was the Comte de Brencourt.
“What!” she stammered out. “M. le Comte—what madness! Camain is here himself!”
“I know!” returned he rather breathlessly. “They are after me—never mind what happened—a folly of my own. I am trying to get as far away from your rooms as possible.”
“But for God’s sake go back there!” said the Duchesse, seizing hold of his arm, and all but pushing him. “Go to my room—you will be safe there. They will not go in!”
“Never!” he exclaimed. “The last thing I should do—compromise you in this affair!” And breaking away from her he disappeared without another word, and was out of sight or hearing before she could even think of some spot in which he could hide. And since her quick wit told her that any delay in returning with the key might lead to Camain himself descending to investigate, she ran on to her little parlour, snatched it up and set off again with all haste. Terrible though it was to leave the Comte to his fate, or at least to his own devices—for she heard no sounds of pursuit yet—it was out of her power to help him now.
From what she caught, as she returned to the little group of persons on the second floor, it seemed that Camain had been singing her praises in her absence.
“I am afraid that you have hurried, Madame Vidal,” he said in a tone of concern as he took the key from her. She was indeed very obviously out of breath. “You should not have done so. These ladies seized the opportunity of taking a breath of air on the balcony, and having a peep from there at the park, which they tell me I ought to keep in better order.”
“Indeed, Monsieur le Député,” put in one of the critics in an affected voice, “you ought to be scolded! It seems, as far as one can judge from up here, to be in the state of the tangled wood which surrounded the castle of the Sleeping Beauty.” She pulled her gauze scarf about her with a still more affected air, acquired with a good deal of pains above her husband’s shop, and the five blue feathers in her turban quivered.
“Now that remark, Madame Constant,” said the Deputy, stooping and fitting the key into the lock, “gives me an opening, does it not, for a pretty speech about the Sleeping Beauty herself? However, Mme Vidal doesn’t like pretty speeches, so I won’t make it.” He opened the door, invited the ladies to enter, and after casting upon Valentine a glance which could only be described as ogling, followed the bevy, who had already fluttered in with exclamations—two of them also casting glances of another nature upon the concierge as they passed.