"Madam," said he, "my duty is my duty. I regret unspeakably to be constrained to inform you that His Most Christian Majesty can receive no person to-day."
"I regret it exceedingly also," answered Lady Ingram. "I can proceed, I suppose, to visit the ladies?"
"Certainly, Madam."
Lady Ingram turned off through further suites of apartments, and the gentleman in black, straightening himself up, disappeared again behind the door. Celia felt relieved. There could be nothing wrong, she thought, in paying respect to the Queen and Princesses, to whom she supposed Lady Ingram to refer; and she followed with a lighter step and heart than before. Her ignorance of the state of the Royal Family of France was very great indeed. That state, in the summer of 1712, was a strange and lamentable one. There was no Queen, yet the King was married; there were no Princesses save one, the Duchess de Berry, yet three of the King's daughters sat round his table every evening.
"Now, Celia!" said Lady Ingram, looking back, "we will pay our respects first to the Duchess de Berry."
"Who is the Duchess de Berry?" Celia inquired softly of Philip.
"The wife of the King's grandson," he whispered in reply.
The Duchess de Berry could receive them, they were told, on asking; and the gentleman usher opened the inner door, and gave access to a large and handsome room, wherein about two dozen ladies and gentlemen were seated at a table, playing cards. A much larger number stood round the room, close to the walls, watching the players. Lady Ingram made her way to a very young girl who sat at one end of the lansquenet-table, and who, Celia thought, was scarcely seventeen. This surely could be the wife of nobody, she mentally decided.
The girl certainly looked very young. Celia, on consideration, doubted if she were seventeen. A soft, bright, innocent face she had, laughing eyes, and a blooming complexion. She looked up with a smile as Lady Ingram approached her, and said a few words in a low tone. Lady Ingram took off her gloves, and sat down quietly at the lansquenet-table, having apparently forgotten her companions.
"Are we to remain here?" asked Celia of Philip, in a tone inaudible to any one but himself.