“He is there?” asked an educated man’s voice.
“Just inside,” she answered. “Be quick, for he can scarcely stand.”
The two men went through the door, and in a moment Roland came out between them, stumbling a little but not so spent that he did not try to stop as he passed her. His supporters very properly would have none of this, but she heard the boy’s low, broken words of gratitude and farewell before the three had vanished in the shadows.
She turned to go in. And then the same man’s form loomed through the darkness again.
“This is for your inestimable services, and your discretion, my good woman,” he whispered. “You can guess whence it comes.” And, seizing one of her hands in the obscurity, he thrust something into it and closed her fingers round the gift.
Very shortly afterwards the Duchesse de Trélan stood alone in the rain under the wet limes of the Allée des Soupirs in her park of Mirabel. Her arm was lightened of the burden she had supported down the avenue, but her heart, although it knew a great relief, beat to an odd little ache that was almost regret. And she stood there between tears and laughter, because of what she held in her hand as an exchange for Roland de Céligny—a considerable bundle of assignats.
CHAPTER X
THE KNIGHT’S MOVE
(1)
May had given place to June before Valentine de Trélan had quite got accustomed to the departure of the handsome boy whose presence had been such an anxiety and yet such a pleasure to her. The five thousand francs which she had in his place—not nearly so large a sum as it appeared owing to the enormous depreciation of paper money under the incapable rule of the Five Kings—she had at first thought of returning to his relatives by Suzon Tessier. But Suzon, by pretending to wish for her own sake to avoid further intercourse with that house, had persuaded the Duchesse to keep their bounty, at least for the present.