"In the household of the prince!" exclaimed Kate.
"Ay! in the household of the prince. Nay, never fear. You will not be the only woman. The Ladies Elcho and Ogilvie will be with you; also old Lady Lochiel. Oh, you will be a bonnie party! While, as for Mr. Fane, some place must also be found."
"But who is to find these places?" she asked.
"Archie," replied Douglas. "He has interest enough with Tencin to do anything. Indeed, from finding a post at court to obtaining a lettre de cachet, he can do it."
"Why," said Bertie to him aside, noticing that he turned pale as he spoke, "did you shiver then, Douglas, as I have seen you do before now? You do not fear a lettre de cachet for Vincennes or the Bastille--and--and--we are not talking of the man at whose name I have seen you shiver before."
"I--I do not know," his companion replied. "It must be that I am fey, or a fool, or both. Yet, last night I dreamt that Archie was asking the minister for a lettre de cachet to consign someone--I know not whom--to the Bastille, and--and--I woke up shivering as I did just now."
"It could not be for you, at least," answered the other.
"Perhaps," replied Douglas, moodily, "for someone who had injured me. Who knows?"
Whatever reply his stronger-minded friend might have made to this gloomy supposition, which was by no means the first he had known Douglas to be subjected to, was not uttered since at that moment Archibald Sholto himself entered the room.
His greetings to Kate were warm and, at the same time, brotherly. He, too, remembered how for years the little party assembled now in La Croix Blanche had all been as though one family; he remembered the black spot that had come amongst them; that to Fordingbridge, whom he himself had introduced into Fane's house, was owing most, if not all, of the evil that had befallen them. Also he recalled that, but for Fordingbridge's treachery, neither he, nor Bertie, nor Douglas would have been forced to flee out of England for their lives; that Kate would never have forfeited her position nor have had the foul yet guarded suggestion hurled against her that she was no wife, but only a priest's mistress. Then, when their first welcomes and salutations were over, he spoke aloud to her on the subject that, above all, engrossed their minds.