Again Valentine stared at him. It was making her dizzy to learn these facts—if they were facts—about her own house after all her years of acquaintance with it.
“You must be crazy, my child,” she said conclusively, “or the plan was a hoax. But to return to these cousins of yours, and how to get you restored to them. The point is whether it would be better to try to smuggle a surgeon in to you, or to smuggle you out. And what to say to them? It is not over safe to tell the exact truth in a letter. It might endanger the bearer also. Let me think.”
She put her shapely, slightly roughened hand over her eyes, and Roland gazed at it.
“Monsieur de Céligny,” she said after a moment, uncovering her eyes, “have you ever fought a duel?”
“No, Madame.”
“Should you object to having come to the park of Mirabel for that purpose last night?”
Roland took her meaning, with a little smile. “There is nothing I should like better.”
“It is the best I can devise for the moment. As I say, it would not do for you to tell the truth in writing. If, to-morrow night, you could walk with my assistance as far as a little door in the park wall that I know of, and if your cousins could procure, with all secrecy, for a carriage to be there. . . . You see, it will be impossible for you to get out of the place you have so rashly entered save in some such clandestine fashion, and even then any mischance——”
“Mischance to me matters not, Madame!” cried the young man. “But if it were to you!”
The Duchesse de Trélan smiled. “Reassure yourself, Monsieur de Céligny. No mischance is likely to come to me. If you feel able I must urge you now to write a line to your cousins about your duel. It might be thought a trap of some kind if I wrote. They must see your hand.”