Vidal got up. “I’m going round to Comyn’s lodging,” he said, and walked to the door.
“Don’t kill him, Dominic, I implore you!” shrieked his cousin.
“For God’s sake, don’t be such a damned little fool, Juliana!” said the Marquis irritably, and departed.
The owner of Mr. Comyn’s lodgings, a retired valet, opened the door to the Marquis, and admitted him into a narrow hall. On being asked for the English gentleman he said that M. Comyn had paid his shot, and left by coach a bare hour since.
“Left, has he? Alone?” demanded the Marquis.
The valet cast down his eyes. “The Englishwoman who came to see him — oh, but at a very strange hour, m’sieur! — was with him.”
He stole a sly look upwards at the Marquis, and was startled by the expression on that dark face. “She was, eh?” said Vidal through his teeth. He smiled, and the valet retreated a pace, quite involuntarily. “Where have they gone? Do you know?”
“But no, m’sieur, how should I tell? The lady had no baggage, but M. Comyn took all of his. He said to me that he will not return, and he gave to me a letter to deliver in the Rue St. Honoré.”
Light flashed in the Marquis’s sombre eyes. “Where in the Rue St. Honoré, my man?”
“It was a letter to an English Marquis, m’sieur, at the Hôtel Avon.”