Musing still, meditating always, he rode on down the great avenue that led towards the little town of Fontainebleau, and, past it, to Paris five-and-thirty miles off; while, as he continued upon his way, he still mused, though now his thoughts took a different turn.
"A pity 'tis," he pondered, "that Humphrey West pryed into their--our--secrets. I would have had him spared, or, at least, slain in open honest fight, not done to death by so foul a thing as that Boisfleury--as La Truaumont says he was after he confessed that he knew all. Boisfleury! A piece of vermin fit only to crawl in the gutters of Paris, to herd with the lowest, but not fit to take the life of young, handsome Humphrey West. Humphrey, poor Humphrey! And poor Mademoiselle d'Angelis. She loved him passing well."
He paused ere concluding what he was saying, and, reining in his horse, stared fixedly into a dense copse that bordered the side of the drive. He stared at something he saw moving suspiciously through the undergrowth and as though with the desire of avoiding attention. Recollecting, however, that, on such a night as this, and after a great hunt in the vast forest which, at that time, covered very nearly a hundred square miles of ground, and where, too, hundreds of villagers, vauriens and ne'er-do-wells generally would be about, he muttered, "Psha! what need to be surprised at the sight of any creeping, crawling vagabond here," and withdrew his hand with almost a feeling of self-contempt from the holster towards which he had thrust it.
As, however, he again set his horse in motion, he saw that which, in all likelihood, had caused the creeping figure to take shelter in the undergrowth, if it was not due to his own appearance. Coming up the long avenue from the direction where, afar off, Paris lay, was one of those vehicles known as a chaise roulante--a small carriage which would hold but one person; a thing not much larger than a sedan-chair, but which was transported on two wheels and had a seat in front for the driver. To-night, since it was entirely dark, a lamp placed by the driver's side was alight and the rays from it were sufficient to illuminate the whole of the interior of the small carriage.
Attracted by the appearance of this vehicle, wondering who could be coming in so plain and common a conveyance to Fontainebleau at this hour--Fontainebleau, with the King in residence!--De Beaurepaire could not resist the impulse of curiosity which impelled him to glance in at the occupant.
Then, suddenly, his hands so tightened on the reins they held that his high-mettled horse rose on its hind legs and, in its rearing, nearly threw him.
He had tightened the reins thus as he saw a white, death-like looking face gazing out as he glanced in at the window; a face from out of which two hollow eyes stared into the darkness of the night.
"Dieu!" De Beaurepaire whispered, even as he knew, as he divined, that he had himself turned as white as that sepulchral-looking face inside the chaise roulante, and while he felt his whole body suffused with the perspiration that burst from every pore. "He is alive. And he knows all. To-night the King will know all, too. He must be here to tell him all!"
[CHAPTER XVIII]
The chaise roulante went on slowly up the avenue towards where, a quarter of a mile ahead of it, innumerable lights shone from all the windows of the royal château; the driver, as it passed De Beaurepaire, saluting obsequiously the man whom, by his rich apparel and quantity of gold lacing and passementerie, he knew to be some great functionary of the Court.