"You will meet Philip soon now," she was saying. "You will tell him all. Alas! that I may not see him myself ere I die."
He could not find it in his heart to tell her how near she was to meeting his brother now: how soon their souls would be together--dared not tell her that he was dead.
"Of what use to do that?" he thought. "If I inform her, she will die, thinking her disappearance slew him. Time enough to know when they meet in heaven."
"I wrote him," she said, "as I was brought through Paris. Confided my letter to a sure hand. Told him how I had been trapped, snared. Bade him come seek for me, save me. Often," she went on, "since first you made your way into that house, I have wondered why he came not himself in answer to my prayer; why sent you in his place. Was it because you are so big and powerful--or was he sick; could not come himself?"
What answer should be made? To say that his brother sent him in his place must bring her lover before the dying woman's eyes in a pitiable light; to say that he was dead would torture her last hours unnecessarily. And--how let her know that the letter she spoke of had never reached her lover's hands?--that he had died believing against his own will that she was false to him. Yet, he must say something, give her some answer. Tell her that the letter had never been received! Yes, that would be best. When, suddenly, even as he so determined--her mind, perhaps, unhinged by approaching death--she herself relieved him of the necessity for any answer.
She began dejectedly to go over the whole story of De Bois-Vallée's connection with her; his treachery to her. And he, sitting there by her bedside, piecing together one broken sentence with another, learnt at last the truth. Learnt what, before, neither Philip nor her father had ever known or he, himself, guessed at.
Discovered that De Bois-Vallée was no stranger to her when he arrived in London in the suite of Henrietta of Orleans.
"I had not seen him for four years," she murmured, lying back upon her pillows, with still her hot, moist hand in his; "not since my father and I returned to England after the King was seated safely on his throne. Not for four years."
"You knew him, Marion?" Andrew asked astonished.
"Very well--surely I told you--I mean, told Philip. Surely! Surely! He was often at my father's lodgings in the Quartier de Picpus. It was there, he being a welcome guest of my father's, who liked him well because of his manliness, his activity, his cleverness with the sword and all arms--that he first told me he loved me, asked my love in return."