Yet as he entered his room he learned that the time had not yet come for him to take that solitary and dangerous journey to France. There was something else to be done first.
Lying on his table were two letters: one, with a great seal upon it, from Admiral Rooke; the other, addressed to a firm of merchants in the city, but with—since its arrival in London—St. Georges's name written over theirs, from Boussac. He read the latter first; before all else it was the child he thought of—then threw it down almost with impatience. He looked eagerly for these letters; they were indeed the anxiety of his life, and now that this had come it told him nothing that he cared to hear.
Yet there was one piece of intelligence in the letter that once would have interested him. The mousquetaire had seen Aurélie de Roquemaure, had spoken with her.
"I met her, mon ami," he wrote, "entering the gallery of audience at Versailles where I was in attendance, and she looked, although pale, for she wears no paint like the other grandes dames—I know not why, since his Christian Majesty expects it——"
"She wore enough when I saw her last!" St. Georges muttered.
"—most beautiful. Mon Dieu! what eyes, what a figure! I knew her only from seeing her pass in to audience before, while as for me she had never deigned so much as a glance. Yet now, figurez vous, mon ami, she spoke to me while waiting for the others to pass before her. 'I have heard,' she said, speaking very low, 'that you are Monsieur Boussac.' I answered that that was my name. Then, after a glance around to see that no eyes were upon us, she went on: 'You did a service once to an unhappy gentleman—a chevau-léger—now dead?' What she was going to say further I know not, since I interrupted her so by the slight start I gave that she paused in her intention, whatever it may have been, raised her eyes to mine and regarded me fixedly. Then she approached her face nearer to mine and whispered: 'Why do you start? He is dead—is he not?' Mon ami, what could I reply? She is the sister, by marriage, of your foe; if I told her you lived, who knows what evil I might work? Therefore, I answered briefly, 'Madame, the galère L'Idole was sunk, and he was in it.' Still she regarded me, however—mon Dieu! it seemed as though her eyes would tear the secret from out of my brains. Then—for now the throng was moving on and she had to go with it—she whispered again: 'If—if by any hazard—he was not sunk with the galley—if he still lives, there is news for him that would make him happy.' Then she passed on with the others, and so out by the main gallery, and I have not seen her since."
There was more in the letter, but at that time St. Georges read no further. Once this news would have stirred every fibre in him, for once he had believed that Aurélie de Roquemaure was his friend—was on his side! He had long ceased, however, to do so; had, instead, come to believe that she and her mother were as inimical to him as their cowardly brother. And long months of meditation had brought him to the belief also that the marquise's scorn against the man who had attacked him and Boussac, and endeavoured to slay the child, was simulated; that they regarded his and Dorine's existence with as much hatred as did De Roquemaure himself. And now, now he felt sure that she knew he was alive and was only eager to discover if he was anywhere near them—near enough to work vengeance on them. As for the news which would "make him happy!"—well, any scheming intriguer might endeavour to hoodwink so simple a soldier as Boussac with such a tale as that! He was only too thankful Boussac had had sufficient discretion not to betray his existence to her. To have done that would be to have put her and De Roquemaure on their guard against that return to France which should yet be made, against that revenge which should yet be taken.
He opened Sir George's letter now, quietly and without excitement, for he had grown used to occasional communications at long intervals from that gallant sailor, telling him that at present it was not in his power to be of service to him; but as he hastily ran his eye over the lines he uttered an exclamation of delight. They ran:
"Namesake, if you are still of the mind you were, the time has come. There is a big muster at St. Helens, for Tourville puts to sea to invade us. A place shall be found for you, though maybe not in my ship. Hurry, hurry, hurry!"