"They know I am here! Through you?"
"No, no! The mark was seen when you lay insensible—ah!" she screamed again. "See, see! it is too late! They are in the garden. It is too late!"
It was true. Along the garden path to which the windows of her salon opened, six soldiers were advancing led by a young officer. Across their shoulders were slung their muskets; the officer carried his drawn sword. And St. Georges looking from her to them knew that he was snared, his freedom gone. Doubtless his life, too.
"Devil," he said to the woman as she reeled back to the lounge and fell heavily on it—"devil, I thanked you too soon. Had I known, dreamed of this, I would have slain you as you dreaded!"
CHAPTER XXX.
"IT IS TRUE."
The windows of the salon giving on to the crushed-shell path of the Hôtel de Louvigny had been open all day to let in the air, and the handsomely apparelled young officer of the Régiment de Grancé, stationed at Rambouillet, was enabled therefore to at once enter the room, leaving his men outside. Yet as he did so he seemed bewildered and astonished at the sight which met his eyes.
Lying fainting, gasping, on her couch was Madame de Louvigny—la belle Louvigny as they called her, and toasted her nightly in the guardroom—standing over her was a man, white to the lips, his hands clinched, his whole form and face expressing horror and contempt.
"Pardie!" the young fellow muttered between his lips, "I have interrupted a little scene, un roman d'amour! Bon Dieu the lover has detected madame in some little infidelity, and—and—has had a moment of vivacity. Yet 'tis not my fault. Devoir avant tout," and as he muttered the motto of the noble house to which he belonged—perhaps as an aid in that devoir—he advanced into the room after bidding his men remain where he had stationed them.