"Monsieur—monsieur, that is not possible," whispered d'Argenson, anxiously. "Mme. de Mailly will be granted her choice. She will not be in any way forced. His Majesty will merely offer."
After he had spoken these words d'Argenson was not sure that Claude had heard them. The young man stood for a minute or two staring at him stupidly, with a look of heavy indifference. Then his body began to straighten, he breathed sharply two or three times, and d'Argenson's muscles stiffened as he prepared to avoid an attack. Claude's hand opened and shut convulsively, but he made no move forward. After a long time, when the tension had grown almost past bearing to his cousin and the minister, de Mailly, with a dignity that Louis himself could not have equalled, said, measuredly: "Well, messieurs, I go home to await my wife. If her choice is free, if she is not forced, she will return to me. This is inevitable. Henri, let us go."
The Marquis, with a melancholy glance at d'Argenson's astonished face, grasped his cousin's arm. Before they went away, however, Claude turned once more to the Count.
"Monsieur, if Mme. de Mailly does remain, all the bolts, all the bars and walls of the Bastille will not be enough to save Louis of France from death at my hands. Tell him so."
D'Argenson bowed low, and Claude, stumbling in his walk like a drunken man, left the room on Henri's arm.
In the mean time Deborah had not reached the supper-room. De Gêvres was her escort from the Hall of Mirrors, supposedly to the Salle du Grand Couvert; but, when they stood upon the threshold of the first corridor, he bent over her, saying, in a low voice: "Madame, the public room will be crowded and disagreeable. In the Salle des Pendules there is to be a little supper, to which I am instructed to invite you. Will you do me the honor to accompany me?"
And Deborah, to whom these private parties so frequently arranged for six or eight in some courtier's suite were far preferable to the general feast, accepted the invitation with cordial good-will. Thereupon they turned from the procession and passed through various courts, halls, and antechambers till they reached the Grande Galerie. Down the still, empty length of this, into the long corridor opening out of it at the other end, and finally into the passage of the Salle du Jeu, they walked.
"It must be a small party, or are we the first?" asked Deborah, as they entered the room and paused before a closed door.
De Gêvres did not answer. Instead, he knocked twice upon the panel.
"Enter," came a voice from within.