“I hope so. Circumstances have never been so favourable. But you are standing all this while; let us go and sit down in the arbour.”
They were seated under the linden arch, as yet untouched by autumn, when she said, “A rumour came yesterday, Gaston, that Vendée had already risen. But we are so out-of-the-way here; is it true?”
Her husband’s face darkened. “Valentine, it is true. Risen, and risen unsuccessfully, alas. Forestier—you may remember hearing of him in the grande guerre—came back from Spain to lead the rising. He was defeated and, it is feared, mortally wounded, at Civière, on the thirtieth of August.”
Valentine gave a little shiver. Defeat . . . wounds. . . . “Gaston, why was it? Surely in Vendée if anywhere——”
“My darling, Vendée is more a name than a power now. That heroic earth is a desert; half her grown men have perished. Three years have not nearly sufficed to raise her from ruins. And yet”——He stopped, and dropped his voice a little. “Yet one thing might have done it. One thing might even have raised the bones of the slain to life and made soldiers of them—the coming of a Prince. It is the old cry—Charette’s cry, the cry of Quiberon.”
She detected bitterness in his tone. “Does so much, then, depend for us now, in Brittany, on the Comte d’Artois’ coming in person?”
The Duc bent his head. “It is hard to say how much.”
“Perhaps I should not ask this, Gaston,” she suggested, uneasy, “but does he mean to come?”
“He says so,” replied M. de Trélan gravely. “I have no doubt he means it. It is that nest of intriguers round him who can never be made to see the necessity. They put it on the British Government.”
Valentine was silent, thinking of the irresponsible Prince Charming whom they had both known personally in the vanished days of Versailles; then she sighed, and changed the topic. But after a little her husband said that it was his duty to pay his respects to Mme de la Vergne, whom he had not yet seen. And as he rose, reluctantly, he said, “Could we not ride together somewhere this afternoon, Valentine—alone?”