Monsieur de Mauves smiled, took a delicate pinch of snuff, and stroked his chin.
"Sometimes I congratulate myself, madame," he said, "on having no young people to marry. Yet, with a sense of duty, which, thank God, they generally have, they are more manageable than their elders. Look, for instance, at your dear and charming brother-in-law. There he is hatching fresh plots, when I have just assured him that the police are not supervising him by my orders, and never shall, if I can trust him to behave like a peaceable citizen."
"Ah, you are very good, Monsieur le Préfet," said Madame de la Marinière. She went on talking absently. "Whatever we may think of your politics," she said, "it seems a crime to annoy or disappoint you. Indeed you do much to reconcile us. But as to Ange—his father's son is never likely—"
"It is a world of surprises, dear madame," said the Prefect, as she did not finish her sentence. "I wish him all that is good—and so I wish that you and Monsieur de la Marinière would send him into the army. He should serve France—should make her his only mistress, at least for the next ten years. Then let him marry, settle down amongst us here—turn against the Emperor, if he chooses—but by that time there will be no danger!"
Thus flattering himself and his master, the Prefect wished her an almost affectionate good night.
In a few minutes more, nearly all the guests were gone. Angelot, still in his quaint acting costume, went out to the court with Monsieur de Sainfoy to see the ladies into their carriages. He then went to change his clothes, his cousin returning to the salon. Hurrying back into the long hall, now empty of servants, vast and rather ghostly with its rows of family portraits dimly lighted, while caverns of darkness showed where passages opened and bare stone staircases led up or down, he saw Hélène, alone, coming swiftly towards him.
She flew up the stairs, the last landing of which he had just reached on his way down, where it turned sharply under a high barred window. Meeting Angelot suddenly, she almost screamed, but stopped herself in time. He laughed joyfully; he was wildly excited.
"Ah, belle cousine!" he said softly. "Dear, we shall say good night here better than in the salon!"
Never once, since that hour in the garden ten days ago, had these two met without witnesses. Hélène, as a rule, was far too well guarded for that. She tried even now, but not successfully, to keep her rather presumptuous lover at a little distance, but in truth she was too much enchanted to see him, her only friend, for this pretence of coldness to last long. Standing with Angelot's arms round her, trembling from head to foot with joy and fear, she tried between his kisses and tender words to tell him how indeed he must not stop her, for in real prosaic truth Madame de Sainfoy had sent her off to bed.
"But why, why, dear angel, before we were all gone! It was the best thing that could happen—but why?"