Traitor and True: A Romance

by John Bloundelle-Burton

"Bah! When we are all as rich as heart of man can desire he can pay himself out of his share of the spoils. Now, ma belle, begone and warn your father to be ready for Monsieur Louis, and tell Madame la Marquise to prepare to join us."

Claire Marie went off upon these errands, the former of which she proceeded to execute by calling over the stair-rails to her father below--though she was careful not to do so in a tone that could by any possibility be heard outside the house. After which, and also after having received from her parent below the answer that he knew Monsieur Louis was coming as well as, if not better than, any one else in the house, she made her way to a flight above that on which she stood, and, going to the end of the passage, rapped on the door of the last room.

Being bidden to enter, the girl did so, and, pushing open the door, found the occupant of that room, a young woman, engaged in arranging her hair in front of a very small glass.

"Madame," Claire Marie said, "all the company are below excepting Monsieur Louis, and he is looked for at once. The Capitaine La Truaumont has bidden me summon you and my father."

"I am making ready to descend," the other answered. "I shall be there ere long." And, she added to herself, after Claire Marie had closed the door and departed, "a fair object I shall appear in his eyes when I do so!" While, as she muttered this, she sighed.

If, however, these reflections were made on her personal appearance, the woman either did not know herself or misjudged herself. For, although she was not beautiful as beauty is reckoned, she had charms that might well be considered the equals of beauty. Her hair, that now she was endeavouring to arrange into the fashion of the day--the fashion that Van Dyck and, later, Kneller depicted--was a lustrous dark auburn; her eyes were dark grey fringed with long black lashes: her mouth, with its short upper lip and full, pouting, lower one, was perfect, especially when she smiled and showed her small white teeth. Her figure, too, was as near perfection as might be.

But, with these charms, there was mingled that which went far to detract very seriously from them, namely, a worn, weary look, a pallor that was hardly ever absent from her face, a lack of colour that spoke either of bodily ailment or mental trouble. Gazing round the melancholy room in which this woman sheltered--"harboured" is a more fitting word--an observer might well have thought that the hardness of her life, a hardness in which, to the sordidness of the apartment was, perhaps, added sometimes the want of food or ordinary necessaries, explained that pallor. Yet, still, in speaking to this woman, in hearing the tone of melancholy in which she answered, in gazing into those dark grey eyes and observing the sadness of their glance, an observer, a listener, would have been disposed to think that the first supposition was wrong and that not bodily, but mental, trouble was the cause of her careworn appearance.

Her hair arranged at last, the woman rose from the chair on which she had been seated, and, after smoothing out some creases in her dress as well as, also, endeavouring to remove some of the stains it bore, went to a drawer and, taking out some various pieces of ribbon and silk, stood before the glass while endeavouring to discover which of the poor frayed scraps of colour might best add any charm to her appearance.

"Yet," she said bitterly, as at last she made her decision, "of what use are these efforts of my wretched vanity? He regards me, will ever regard me, but as a useful auxiliary to his ambitious schemes. I am of the land and the people whose voice and assistance he seeks--once I was of the best of those people. So, too, he knows my fierce determination to stand at last, if Fate so wills it, before those people as their human saviour and not as the outcast they made of me; as the woman who, despised of them, has lived to earn their gratitude. Knowing this, he uses me to aid his own great purpose and will so use me to the end, and, if that end be successful for him, then cast me off. Unhappily," she murmured, her face almost the picture of despair, "I know he will do so, which is for me the worst of all. I serve him understanding well that I am as nought in his eyes. I work to help him, starve and go in rags to make his chance better, and--I am but dust, dross, in his eyes."

After which she turned away from the glass, into which she looked so often while hating to look at all, and went towards the door, muttering, "And still I do it."