The marquis smiled. "I have grown thin in ten years, that is all."
"Shall you leave any commands, Monsieur?"
"You may have the evening to yourself, and don't return till midnight."
Jehan bowed. There was nothing for him to say.
At dinner the marquis was unusually brilliant and witty. He dazzled the governor and his ladies, and unbent so far as to accept four glasses of burgundy. On one side sat Anne de Vaudemont, on the other the governor's son, and directly opposite, Madame de Brissac, an unnamed mystery to them all save Anne. Madame, despite her antagonism and the terror lest she be discovered and unmasked by those remarkable grey eyes, found herself irresistibly drawn toward and fascinated by this remarkable exponent of a past epoch. She forgot the stories she had heard regarding his past, she forgot the sinister shadow he had cast over her own life, she forgot all save that without such men as this there would and could be no history. And she was quite ignorant of the fact that her scrutiny was being returned in kind.
"Madame," he asked, "have I not met you somewhere in wide and beautiful France?"
"France is wide, as you say. I do not recollect having seen you before taking passage on the Henri IV."
He felt instinctively that she had immediately erected a barrier between them; not from her words, but from their hidden sense. He at once turned to Anne and recounted an anecdote relating to her distinguished grandsire. But covertly he watched madame; watched the half-drooping eyelids, the shadow of a dimple in her left cheek, the curving throat, the shimmering ringlet which half obscured the perfect ear. He had seen this face before, or one as like it as the reflection of the moon upon placid water is like the moon itself. Now and then he frowned, remembering his purpose. But why was this young woman, who was fit to grace a palace, why was she here incognito? Ah!
"Madame, have you met Monsieur le Chevalier du Cévennes, my son?"
Anne trembled for her friend.