"Oh! madame, neither the illustrious captain nor monsieur the Englishman have been seen below this morning. Yet--yet--the horses are all in their stalls, not one is missing."
"Oh! great heavens," moaned Jacquette at this significant piece of intelligence.
"And the other," cried the Duchess, "the great truculent one? The fellow called Fleur de Mai. What of him? Why is he not here as I commanded?"
"Madame," the maid cried, her voice rising almost to a shriek, "he, too, is missing. He slept before the fire in the great room wrapped in his cloak, but at daybreak, when the house was opened, he was no longer there--and--madame, neither can he be found."
"Not found. Yet there was still another, the meaner one; the one called Boisfleury," the Duchess cried, springing out of her bed in beauteous disarray. "What of him? Is he too, missing? And the landlord, where is he?"
"The landlord, madame, is bewildered. He comes with the pass-keys to open all the doors of their rooms. As for the man, Boisfleury, he is outside. He waits on Madame la Duchesse."
"Take him into the salon. And, Jacquette, give me my robe. Quick. 'Twill cover this négligé." While, as she spoke, she seized the masses of long hair that hung down her back and twisted them up into a huge knot upon her head. After which she thrust her little feet into a pair of warm, soft slippers and entered the salon followed by Jacquette.
Before her there stood the man, Boisfleury, white and shaky looking, so that, as Hortense shrewdly suspected, he had been hastily summoned from his bed, wherein, she did not doubt, he had been sleeping off the potency of the draughts in which he and his companion nightly indulged.
"What know you of these absent men?" she asked now, while her usually soft, velvety eyes looked anything but softly into those of the man before her so that, either from their piercing glance, or from the vision of beauty en déshabille which confronted him--or, perhaps, from that other cause which the Duchess had suspected--he shivered and shook before her.
"What know you, I say? Answer, man, and stand not trembling thus. Speak, fellow."