"On the next night," Emérance continued, "ah! let me recall. Yes. On the next night your name was again uttered. By me--accursed be my tongue!--when I spoke of rejoining you here in Paris, and by La Truaumont by the sobriquet I love to hear applied to you, that of 'Le Dédaigneux.' For disdainful you are to all--except to me," her voice sinking to a murmur as she added those last two words.
"Ha!" De Beaurepaire said with a grim smile, "if Humphrey West heard no mention of my name by you, he would scarce know that I am 'Le Dédaigneux'."
"Alas," the woman almost wailed, "'twas touched upon that the King's guards had been despatched to join the main body of the army: that Le Dédaigneux had taken heed for that. Le Dédaigneux--their colonel."
"Enough. With this he knows all. And by now Louis and De Louvois, too, who never leaves his master's side, know it also. It is enough, more than enough. When the Court returns from Fontainebleau four days hence La Reynie will know it as well."
"Four days! You have four days in which to escape, to hide yourself, to put some frontier between you and the King's wrath! Ah! heaven! you are saved."
"And lost also. Once I cross any frontier I shall never recross it, never return to France. Never. Never. And I am a De Beaurepaire; my blood, my life is drawn from France and I shall never see it more."
"Nay. With time the King will forgive. You have often said his heart is kindly, that he is never cruel. That he has forgiven much to both women and men who have deceived him."
"Ay, to both women and men. But the women were false to his heart alone, and there are thousands of other women in France as fair as they: a king woos and wins where he will. And the men he has forgiven have but forgotten for a moment the difference between him and them; but when it is his throne, his crown, that is in danger, he never forgives."
"Seize then upon these four days; fly to Holland or Switzerland, or Italy, and escape. Sell your charges to those whom you have oft told me would buy them, and fly."
"And you? You--my love?"