Three days passed. At Orléans the settlers had had two or three brushes with marauding Mohawks. A letter from Father Chaumonot at the mission in Onondaga reported favorable progress. D'Hérouville was again out of hospital; and De Leviston had stolen quietly away to Montreal, where he was shortly to succumb to the plague. Only three persons knew of the remarkable conflict between the marquis and D'Hérouville: the son, Brother Jacques, and the Vicomte d'Halluys, who possessed that mysterious faculty of finding out many things of which the majority were unaware. As for the marquis, Brother Jacques fostered the belief that it had been only a wild dream.
Each morning Madame de Brissac watched with growing eagerness the lading of the good ship Henri IV. It seemed impossible to her that the deception in regard to the Chevalier could continue much longer. Where was the dénouement on which she had builded so fondly? She had put it off so many times that perhaps it was now too late. Sooner or later Victor would slip, and the mask would be at an end. And why not? Why not have done with a comedy which had grown stale? Why not tell Monsieur du Cévennes that she was Gabrielle Diane de Montbazon, she whose miniature he had crushed beneath the heel of his riding boot? Rather would she tell him than leave it to the offices of D'Hérouville or the vicomte. Surely her purpose had been to bring him to his knees and then laugh! Relent? Not while her cup still held a drop of pride. She had been mad indeed. To have come here to Quebec with purpose and impulse undefined! Daily she mocked her weakness. Truly she was the daughter of her mother, extravagant, unbalanced, blown hither and thither by caprice as a leaf is blown by an autumn wind.
The thought of him stirred her as nothing had ever before stirred her. It was hate, it was wounded pride crying out for vengeance, it was the barb of scorn urging her to give back in kind. And, heaven above! he had been on his knees, and she had dallied with the moment of revenge even as a cat dallies with a mouse. Diane! She detested the name. Fool! And yet, why was he here? What was this sudden veil of mystery which hid him from her secret eyes? Victor knew, and yet his love for her was not so great that he could tell her another's secret. And the governor knew, D'Hérouville, and the vicomte; and they were as silent as stone. Love? A fillip of her finger for love! Happy indeed was she to learn that neither the marquis nor the Chevalier would return to France on the Henri IV. Such a way have the women.
Monsieur le Marquis lay in his bed, the bed from which he was to rise but once again in life. His thin fingers had drawn the coverlet closely under his chin, and from time to time they worked spasmodically. His head, scarce less white than the pillow beneath it, went on nodding from side to side, as if in perpetual negation to those puzzling questions which occupied his brain. His eyebrows were constantly bending, and his grey eyes burned with a fever which was never to be subdued. Across the foot of the bed lay a golden bar of morning sunlight.
"How long must I lie in this cursed bed?" he asked.
Brother Jacques left the window and came to the bedside. "Perhaps a month, Monsieur; it all depends upon your patience."
"Patience? I have little against my account. When does the Henri IV sail?"
"A week from to-day."
"In bed or on foot, I shall sail with it. I am weary of trees, and rocks, and water. I desire to see the cobbles of Rochelle and Périgny before I die. Have you no canary in this abominable land?"
"The physician denies you wine, Monsieur."