But instead of obeying Villon flung the door wide. The Dauphin was on the threshold, half dressed, his shoes unbuckled, his laces awry, his face cadaverous in its pallor. He had been crying, and the traces of the unwiped tears lined his cheeks. Underneath the dull eyes, duller than common, were livid hollows, and he shook from head to foot in a nervous terror.
"Hugues," he said, his voice a-quaver. "How am I to do without Hugues?
He always slept at my door, and now I have no one—no one at all.
Ursula, what has happened? What are they saying to you?"
Mechanically obedient to the dominant power of custom rather than to any conscious will, Ursula de Vesc had risen at the boy's entrance. But the strain of an enforced calmness is greater than that of any passionate outburst, and only the support of the table kept her on her feet. Against this she leaned, her open hand flat upon it.
"Monseigneur—Charles—oh! why did you come just now?" Her voice broke as it had not broken when confronting Saxe or braving the bitter denunciation Commines had poured upon her. But the boy's presence fretted her realization to the quick. It was not she alone before whose feet the gulf had opened so suddenly. "Go back to your room. Some one will take Hugues' place,—good, brave, loyal Hugues."
"Sleep in peace, Monseigneur," said La Mothe, "I will take Hugues' place to-night."
But Commines thought he saw his way to end a scene which had grown embarrassing, and at the same time take the first step along a path which could have but one end.
"There is no need for that. One of my men will guard the Dauphin."
"Your man? A man from Valmy sleep at my door? Thank you, Monseigneur d'Argenton, but I do not wish to sleep so soundly as that."
"And yet you wished your father to sleep sound?"
"My quarrel with my father is between the King and the Dauphin," answered the boy with one of those sudden accessions of dignity which were as characteristic as they were disconcerting. "Do you, sir, know your place and keep it. Ursula, what is Saxe doing here at this time of night?"