That alone was startling, since, if De Beaurepaire did not love the Duchesse de Castellucchio, why and wherefore had he jeopardised his own great position in helping her in such an attempt! Humphrey West knew well enough the power, often enough exerted, against those who assisted women of position, girls who were wealthy heiresses, or wards of La Grande Chambre, by La Grande Chambre itself. Were there not men detained in the Bastille, in Vincennes, in Bicêtre at this very moment, ay, even in far off Pignerol, for similar actions, while in their case they had, or pretended to have, the one great, the one supreme excuse that they loved the women whom they had assisted in evading their lawful custodians. Yet, he told himself, this excuse was not available by De Beaurepaire. For here, next to his own room, but a little while ago, was a woman whom La Truaumont had spoken of as an admirer of his; one who was doubtless admired by him. Here in the very same house, under the very same roof, not forty paces from that other woman!
"What does it mean?" Humphrey asked himself a dozen times. "What? While, strange as it all is, it is nought beside this other strange news. This news that he may be a king. A king! Yet how--and king of what? Of what. Of what other land than France could he, a De Beaurepaire, have dreams of becoming king! And by what means? Ah! great heavens, by what means? In what way but by the most bitter, the blackest treason! By introducing, by helping to introduce, some foreign power into the land to--dethrone the present lawful king! Oh! Oh! it is too awful, too terrible to think upon."
Yet the young man did think upon it far into the night and until, at last, through the heavily curtained windows of his room there stole the first grey streaks and rays of the approaching dawn. He thought of it unceasingly; he thought of the terrors that must threaten this man whom he now befriended and helped; this man who, haughty, cruel, hostile as he often was to others, had never been aught but gentle and kind to him--this man whom he had learnt to admire and think well of; whom he was proud to serve in serving the Duchess.
Yet Humphrey was old enough to know, to remember, that of all the treacheries and conspiracies which had surrounded the life and throne of Le Dieudonné since, as a child, he had ascended that throne thirty years ago, not one of them had ever approached even near to success. Not one had had any result but a death shameful and ignoble for the men who had been concerned in those treacheries and conspiracies.
"Five years ago," he murmured to himself as he tossed in his bed where, until he heard those whispering voices, he had been sleeping so peacefully, "five years ago Roux de Marsilly perished on the wheel for such a crime as this talked of in that next room this very night. This very year the Comte de Sardan has suffered in the same way; there have been a dozen attempts all ending in disaster. And, oh! the wickedness of it, 'specially in him, the playmate of the King in childhood, his Grand Veneur, the head of his Guards. In him who, of all men, should guard his master from treachery."
The young man thought over all this even as he still sought sleep, while understanding and acknowledging to himself that he could hope for little farther rest that night; and, since sleep would come no more, he endeavoured to arrange some plan of action whereby, if possible, he, simple gentleman though he was, might be able to prevent De Beaurepaire from rushing on his ruin.
But first he must know something further. He must discover more from those two plotters whom he had chanced to overhear this night. In some way he must make himself acquainted with who and what this woman was who harboured in the very house where was now reposing the woman he had to help escort across the Alps. He would know, if possible, every thread of the plot now in hand, every ramification of it, every person concerned in it.
And then, if he could do that, it would be time for action.
At last, however, he was enabled to obtain some little rest; at last, when daylight had come, the workings of his brain ceased, and, for an hour or so, he slept.
He did so until the hour of nine was striking from all the clocks in the city, when he was aroused by a clatter beneath his window not unlike that which, over night, had aroused Emérance from her meditations in front of the hearth in her salon. Yet this clatter on the cobble-stones of the place heralded no such arrival as that which the woman had witnessed, no handsome travelling carriage escorted by soldiers and adventurers as represented by La Truaumont, Boisfleury, Fleur de Mai and even Humphrey himself; no descent at the inn of a beautiful woman whose wealth and position made her one of the foremost aristocrats in France, nor any pretty young girl such as Jacquette.