“Come, Abbé,” interposed the Marquis, “are you not being ungenerous to a less fortunate rival? You are surely not casting it up at M. de Brencourt that he endured a brief captivity for the King’s cause?”
The Abbé shook his head. “M. le Comte knows that I am not,” he replied. “But I am afraid that we are checking Roland’s interesting recital by our divergences on the subject of Mme Vidal. If he will forgive our bad manners . . .”
“Yes, go on, Roland,” said the Marquis. “But you must eat too. You were telling us about your actual entry into the château.”
“I got as far as Mme Vidal’s room,” resumed Roland obediently, “and then I suppose I fainted again, for the next thing I remember is finding myself in bed there, and Mme Vidal bending over me again.—Ah, by the way,” he cried, suddenly remembering something which might serve as a contribution to portraiture, “there was one curious little fact about her which I forgot to mention. It was then that I first noticed it. One of her eyes, though they were almost blue, had some brown specks in it. Did you remark it, Monsieur l’Abbé? It was the right eye. You could only see it when she was quite near you.”
“No . . . I . . . did not observe it,” said the Abbé. He spoke as if a strong wind of sudden origin had somehow taken away his breath. From the lower end of the table came the sound of a man drawing his sharply.
“I remember I used to look at it when she nursed me,” went on Roland, happy at producing some effect in the end. “And I——”
He was interrupted by a voice he scarcely knew. “She had eyes, you say, almost blue, with brown specks in one?” gasped the Marquis, jerking forward in his chair. “Did I hear rightly? Blue eyes . . . which one had the . . . say it again!”
In a dead silence, and much embarrassed thereby, Roland repeated his observation. The Marquis de Kersaint, leaning forward in his chair, his left hand clutching the table, looked at him with eyes which seemed as if they would drive through him, and as the young man, fascinated by that extraordinary gaze, returned it, he saw his leader slowly turn so pale that it looked as if every vestige of blood had been drained away from his face. Even his lips were the colour of paper. Next moment, without a word, without even a gesture of apology, he had pushed back his chair, risen from his place, and disappeared into his bedroom.
Roland fell back, smitten dumb with astonishment and, staring at the door which had just closed, he did not see the black and thunderous look which the Comte de Brencourt darted first at him and then at the Abbé. But in a moment the priest, too, was on his feet.
“It must be that wound of his,” he said quickly. “If you will excuse me a minute, Messieurs?” And he, too, went through the bedroom door. Roland saw his face as he went; it was not inexpressive now. It wore a most singular look of mingled gravity and exultation.