"Excuse my leaving you so abruptly," said Frost, "but I saw Jesse going off with the sleigh, and as I had given him no orders, I wanted to know where he was going. But it was all right. Are you ready, sir? I am afraid if we stay much longer you will catch cold." This last remark was added as the Marquis politely smothered a sneeze with his flimsy lace handkerchief.
"C'est bien, monsieur. I fear I have taken a little cold. Perhaps it would be just as well if we explore no further to-day."
"If you prefer, sir," answered Dan, holding the door open for his guest to go out. Monsieur de Boisdhyver turned and surveyed the Oak Parlour once more before he left it. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "this so charming room—it is of a perfection! Dorsetshire, you say? ... To me it would seem French." They walked back rapidly along the dark cold corridors to the bar. All the way the Marquis, wrapped tightly in his great cloak, kept the thumb of his left hand in his waistcoat pocket, pressing securely against the paper he had taken from the old cabinet in the Oak Parlour.
CHAPTER III
THE MARQUIS AT NIGHT
The household of the Inn at the Red Oak soon became accustomed to the presence of their new member; indeed, he seemed to them during those bleak winter months a most welcome addition. Except for an occasional traveller who spent a night or a Sunday at the Inn, he was the only guest. He was gregarious and talkative, and would frequently keep them for an hour or so at table as he talked to them of his life in France, and of his adventures in the exciting times through which his country had passed during the last fifty years. He was the cadet, he told them, of a noble family of the Vendée, the head of which, though long faithful to the exiled Bourbons, had gone over to Napoleon upon the establishment of the Empire. But as for himself—Marie-Anne-Timélon-Armand de Boisdhyver—he still clung to the Imperial cause, and though now for many years his age and infirmities had forced him to withdraw from any part in intrigues aiming at the restoration of the Empire, his sympathies were still keen.
When he talked in this strain, of his thrilling memories of the Terror and of the extraordinary days when Bonaparte was Emperor, Dan and Tom would listen to him by the hour. But Mrs. Frost preferred to hear the Marquis's reminiscences of the ancien régime and of the old court life at Versailles. He had been a page, he said, to the unfortunate Marie Antoinette; he would cross himself piously at the mention of the magic name, and digress rapturously upon her beauty and grace, and bemoan, with tears, her unhappy fate. She liked also to hear of the court of Napoleon and of the life of the faubourgs in the Paris of the day. On these occasions the young men were apt to slip away and leave the Marquis alone with Mrs. Frost and Nancy.
For Nancy Monsieur de Boisdhyver seemed to have a fascination. She would listen absorbed to his voluble tales, her bright eyes fixed on his fantastic countenance, her head usually resting upon her hand, and her body bent forward in an attitude of eager attention. She rarely spoke even to ask a question; indeed, her only words would be an occasional exclamation of interest, or the briefest reply.
During the day their noble guest would potter about the house or, when the weather was fine, stroll down to the shore, where he would walk up and down the strip of sandy beach in the lee of the wind hour after hour. Now and then he wandered out upon the dunes that stretched along the Neck; and once, Dan afterwards learned, he paid a call upon old Mrs. Meath who lived by herself in the lonely farmhouse on Strathsey Neck, that was known as the House of the Dunes.