Laurence laughed and shrugged her shoulders, but without any indignation whatsoever. This merry daughter of Provence amused her even at this critical moment. Moreover, during the last few minutes a sudden plan had formed in her head: a plan for the execution of which Célèste might be a most useful and powerful aid.
“Don’t you think, Célèste,” she began, a trifle hesitatingly—“don’t you think that we might escape from here, you and I alone, without anybody being the wiser?”
Célèste drew in her breath sensationally, and then let it out again between her rather pointed white teeth, in sincere compliment to a harmonious steam-valve. It was her usual method of expressing surprise, admiration, fear, joy, and what not else? There may be worse ones.
“Decamp!—vanish!” she cried, joyfully. “What a magnificent idea! But”—and she paused, one dimpled hand to her lips—“how can we do it, Madame la Princesse? The château is guarded like a caserne, and it’s all rock, with walls that thick”—here she illustrated the thickness of those walls by a flight of both arms inimitably comprehensive and spaceful.
“You were speaking of the grooms, whom you decidedly have noticed,” interrupted Laurence. “Tell me frankly, have you got any special friend among them?”
Célèste immediately fell into an attitude of unconvincing coyness; her whole diminutive person emanated a righteousness not to be trifled with, but the tip of her retroussé nose moved quaintly, like that of a rabbit scenting clover-laden breezes—the devil was losing nothing—and Laurence, who knew her handmaiden by heart, waited silently.
“Madame la Princesse must be pleased to joke!” the girl began, with much underlying archness. “A special friend—an amoureux? Is that what Madame la Princesse means?”
“Yes, if you like, an admirer.”
“No! no! Madame la Princesse—excepting of course that great lout of a Fidèlka, who makes a fool of himself whenever he gets the chance, and chooses to look at one with his big goggle eyes. These Russians—Madame la Princesse knows well how they are when they see a petticoat above a tight-drawn stocking—more especially a silk stocking....” And the bright eyes glanced modestly down at the trim ankle and charmingly slippered foot peeping from the hem of her well-fitting dark-cloth skirt.
“Fidèlka! A reassuring name for you. Faithful! Can anything speak more highly for him? Well, Célèste, do you believe that you could persuade your goggle-eyed pet to smuggle a sleigh out of the stables at sunrise to-morrow, and to drive us to the next post-station? Nobody would dare to pursue me, I am sure of that!”