"Just so," said Villon cheerfully, "and a week before Monsieur d'Argenton came to Amboise he told you no one was safe from the King's sick suspicions, not even if he carried a safe-conduct, and instanced——"
"Villon is right!" cried La Mothe. "Monsieur d'Argenton—Uncle—thank God, Villon is right. Guy de Molembrais was alive a week before we left Valmy. Saxe has lied, lied, lied. Do you see it, Uncle? I knew he lied. Oh, you hound! you hound! And you had a letter from Valmy this afternoon? That accounts——"
"Hush, Monsieur La Mothe, hush." Rising from her chair Ursula de Vesc almost put her hand over La Mothe's mouth in her efforts to silence him. "You have said enough; do not say too much—too much for yourself. Charles, Charles, let us thank God together," and, turning from La Mothe, she caught the boy in her arms, drawing him to her breast in a passion of relief. It was not difficult to see what her chief anxiety had been. "Monsieur d'Argenton, surely you are satisfied now?"
Was he satisfied? By no means. But Commines was spared the embarrassment of an immediate reply. The door, which Villon had just quitted, was thrown hastily open and a servant entered, a sealed envelope in his hand. Ignoring the Dauphin utterly—and it was indicative of the estimate in which the boy was held—he turned to Commines.
"From Valmy, for Monsieur d'Argenton, in great haste. The messenger has left a horse foundered on the road."
"From Valmy? But this is not the King's—there! you can go. See that the messenger is well cared for."
With his thumb under the silk thread which, passing through the seal, secured the envelope, Commines paused and, in spite of all his trained self-control, his face changed. Of all the emotions, fear is, perhaps, the most difficult to conceal because of its widely varied shades of expression. With some it is a tightening of the nostrils, with others a compression of the lips, a change of colour, or a line between the brows. It may even be the laugh of an assumed carelessness, a pretence at jest, but upon one and all it leaves some sign. The seal was not the King's seal, and the handwriting was strange to him.
"Saxe, if you have lied, it will go hard with you, understand that.
No, I can hear nothing now; tomorrow, perhaps, or next day. Monsieur
Villon, place him in safety for to-night, he must not be allowed to
leave the Château."
"But, monsieur—monseigneur, I mean—it was the King—"
"Hold your tongue, you fool," said Villon, hustling him through the doorway; "would you make bad worse, or do you want to hang twice over?"