"Ma petite Vénus de poche," remarked another to him, clad as an arquebusier, "have a care how you curse the law; otherwise you may get broken yourself. There are plenty of police here in disguise, and if they hear you, that goodly hump of yours will stand a fine chance of being smashed by the executioner's bar. Ma foi! the coup de grâce is generally administered to the chest bone; with you, I presume, it will be administered on the bosse."
"I spoke only in jest," exclaimed the deformed one, glancing round apprehensively; "I meant no harm. A good subject, I, of the King of France and all his ministers. But come, let us away. Who's for the Grève? Mon Dieu! we must not miss the show!"
"I am for it, for one!" screamed a girl not over twenty, whose golden hair hung down over her back, and whose tones and glances proclaimed her to be already far sunken in dissipation. "I have never yet seen a man done to death; and as for the wheel, why, I have prayed often for a chance of seeing it. They say the coup de grâce is magnificent if the--the patient--is still sensible. Now, in our old village, before the young lord brought me to town, we never saw anything but a beggar in the stocks. And, dame! les ceps cease to be interesting after one has pelted the occupiers for half an hour."
"Pretty things," said the arquebusier, looking down sardonically on her, "have a care, ma chère, that you never come to worse than les ceps yourself. I have known many country girls brought to town by their young lords, and--hem!--who got worse shift than the stocks when they were discarded."
"Ah! voyons!" exclaimed the girl, "avec ça! Look you, my figure of fun, you are insolent. Get you home to your wife and family, and earn bread for them. We of the fashion desire none of your banalités."
Yet, as she spoke, she was being inducted into her long cloak by some of her would-be admirers, and also many others were getting ready. For Paris had not had an execution for some two months now, and the "half-tiger, half-monkey nature" which Voltaire attributed to his countrymen was thirsty for its favourite form of entertainment.
In the ball-room itself there sat, however, a group very different from those in the vestibule, who, since the masquerades were open to all who could pay for admission, had attended the ball. This group consisted of Sir Charles and Lady Ames--once Lady Belrose--and Kate, who, in spite of her melancholy and her ill-health, had been persuaded to accompany them. Heaven knows such diversions were little enough in her way now! yet Lady Ames had been kind to her when she needed kindness, and, at the express desire of Sir Charles and his wife, she had consented to go with them.
In one way she was not unhappy: she knew, she felt certain, that this second disappearance of Bertie Elphinston from the knowledge of the world was not of his own accord. That something terrible had happened she could not doubt; yet she knew also that, whatever that something might be, it was not due to any desire to hide himself from her--that was, if he was still alive. But was he?
Douglas's awful death by an unknown hand might also have been Elphinston's lot: who could tell? And then her own husband's disappearance! Did not that point to some catastrophe? Over and over again she had meditated on all these things, lying awake for nights together, pondering over them, wondering, wondering always. For even now she was in total ignorance of who the murderer of Douglas had been, of what Archibald had discovered. He had written to her at intervals, it was true, but he had either avoided all reference to the tragedy, or had said that, if the murderer was ever brought to justice, she would doubtless know all. Her husband he never mentioned.
Yet, those who are aware of what she could not guess can understand how difficult a task it would have been for the Jesuit to tell her that he had discovered the assassin, and that Fordingbridge, her husband, was the man. It may be that, after he had handed him over to the proper authorities, he hoped, nay, endeavoured so to arrange that she should never discover that her husband was the criminal. Better that he should disappear from her knowledge forever, go to his doom without her dreaming that he had paid for the crime with his life, than that she should know to what a foul thing she had been united.