CHAPTER XXVII
"GOD KEEP YOU, NOW AND ALWAYS"
But the next day Mademoiselle de Narbonne would not let us go.
"There is no need for haste," said she. "Consider for yourself; truly there is no haste. Jean Volran, once his blood is cool, will kill no horses riding to tell his master your plot has failed. This time bad news will bait by the way. Even then that woman is in no danger. The King is not wanton in his wickedness. With him evil has a purpose, and he is ruthless rather than cruel. The woman will be safe for at least a week."
She was right, and in the reaction which followed the high-strung tension of the conflict at La Voulle, judge if I did not catch greedily at the procrastination. But not for a week; the risk every way was too great; two days perhaps.
"Two days?" she repeated, glancing at Paul. "What do you say to that, mon père?"
"Sufficient, I think," he answered thoughtfully. "Yes, more than sufficient, for we had last night."
"Good! On Tuesday, then," said she, and the two left me.
More than sufficient! That was a hard saying, and not like Father Paul. Yet even to me the hard saying was a true one. These two days were more than sufficient to weary me of Morsigny, for in them I was left to isolation, except for a half hour thrice a day when we came together to break our fast. Now that her nurse's masquerade was over, Mademoiselle de Narbonne appeared to be burdened with affairs, and it may be that there were letters to write, for couriers were sent away thrice, once to Pau, and twice to Pamplona.
I suppose Paul guided her in these, for not even he was visible, until at last, having haunted Morsigny all that Sunday for a glimpse of his kindly sorrowful face, I shut myself up in my own chamber at sunset, an ill-used, ill-tempered man. Of what use was it to say, Wait two days, if in them I was shut up to my own thoughts for company? Not even Mademoiselle's rose, nodding towards me across a rim of glass, was any comfort.