Another snow-squall swept in with a rush from the eastward, and half of the fire was blown away—a trail of sparks hissing on the snow. They built up the fire again and waited, crouching low over the embers. They could see nothing out to sea. There was nothing to be done but to wait. Some had gone along the shore to the south, keeping pace with the supposed progress of the boat, ready to help should she be thrown ashore.
Suddenly the Marquis de Gemosac, shivering over the fire, raised his voice querulously. His emotions always found vent in speech.
“It is a folly,” he repeated, “that he has committed. I do not understand, gentlemen, how he was permitted to do such a thing—he whose life is of value to millions.”
He turned his head to glance sharply at Captain Clubbe, at Colville, at Turner, who listened with that half-contemptuous silence which Englishmen oppose to unnecessary or inopportune speech.
“Ah!” he said, “you do not understand—you Englishmen—or you do not believe, perhaps, that he is the King. You would demand proofs which you know cannot be produced. I demand no proofs, for I know. I know without any proof at all but his face, his manner, his whole being. I knew at once when I saw him step out of his boat here in this sad village, and I have lived with him almost daily ever since—only to be more sure than at first.”
His hearers made no answer. They listened tolerantly enough, as one listens to a child or to any other incapable of keeping to the business in hand.
“Oh. I know more than you suspect,” said the Marquis, suddenly. “There are some even in our own party who have doubts, who are not quite sure. I know that there was a doubt as to that portrait of the Queen,” he half glanced toward Dormer Colville. “Some say one thing, some another. I have been told that, when the child—Monsieur de Bourbon’s father—landed here, there were two portraits among his few possessions—the miniature and a larger print, an engraving. Where is that engraving, one would ask?”
“I have it in my safe in Paris,” said a thick voice in the darkness. “Thought it was better in my possession than anywhere else.”
“Indeed! And now, Monsieur Turner—” the Marquis raised himself on his knees and pointed in his eager way a thin finger in the direction of the banker—“tell me this. Those portraits to which some would attach importance—they are of the Duchess de Guiche. Admitted? Good! If you yourself—who have the reputation of being a man of wit—desired to secure the escape of a child and his nurse, would you content yourself with the mere precaution of concealing the child’s identity? Would you not go farther and provide the nurse with a subterfuge, a blind, something for the woman to produce and say, ‘This is not the little Dauphin. This is so-and-so. See, here is the portrait of his mother?’ What so effective, I ask you? What so likely to be believed as a scandal directed against the hated aristocrats? Can you advance anything against that theory?”
“No, Monsieur,” replied Turner.