“I must be ready for your Highness!” he exclaimed hurriedly, addressing the Regent, but with his eye fixed on the treacherous flowers. “Madame, I have the honour of wishing you a good-night!” he added in the same breath; while with an energetic flourish of his cocked hat he knocked them clean out of the lady’s hands to a few paces’ distance on the floor, letting the hat follow; and as he recovered the latter, crushing the bouquet to pieces, as if inadvertently, beneath his foot. It was the second time he had practised this manœuvre within twelve hours, and he was perfect in his lesson.
Rising with an affectation of great confusion, he made his excuses to Madame de Parabére, contriving, amongst a torrent of phrases, to convey, unobserved, the single word “Beware!” And she understood him, contenting herself with a glance of intense gratitude, and an inward vow she would never rest till she had found opportunity to repay both friend and foe.
The Regent laughed heartily at the joke. “You must have supped already, my friend,” said he, “and not spared the wineflask. So much the better; you are all the fitter for your night’s work. Come! let us be moving. It is time we were off!”
Madame de Montmirail stood a while, stupefied, paralysed, as it were, at the failure of an attack thus foiled by the last person in whom she expected to find an opponent. The first instant she could have hated him with all the fierceness of baffled rage. The next, she felt she had never loved him half so well as now. He had thwarted her; he had tamed her; he had saved her from crime, from ruin, from herself! All in one glance of the keen eye, one turn of the ready hand. She acknowledged him for her master, and to her such a sentiment was as fascinating as it was new. She would have liked to burst out crying, and kneel at his feet, imploring to be forgiven, had time and place permitted so romantic an exhibition. At least, she could not let him go without another word, and Captain George, following the Regent through the crowd towards the door, felt a hand laid timidly on his arm, heard a broken voice whispering softly in his ear.
She trembled all over. Her very lips shook while she murmured, “Forgive me, monsieur! I must explain all. I must see you again. Where do you go to-night?”
“To sup with his Highness,” answered the Musketeer, keeping the Duke’s figure in sight as it threaded the jostling, shifting throng of noisy revellers.
“But that is not till midnight,” she urged. “He said something about duty. You are brave! You are rash! For heaven’s sake, promise you will not rush into needless danger!”
He laughed good-humouredly, and reassured her at once. “Danger! madame! Nothing of the kind. I can trust you not to gossip. It is a mere frolic. We are going a league or two out of Paris, to raise the devil!” And observing the Duke turning back for him, he escaped from her and was lost in the crowd.
She looked longingly after him, and sighed. “To raise the devil!” she repeated, pressing both hands on her heart. “And not the only one to-night. Alas! you have raised one here that none but yourself can lay!”