His face was vaguely familiar to her; she thought that she must have seen him at Versailles.
“Why did you return to France, Madame?” he asked.
The sound of a refined man’s voice was beyond words grateful to her ears; the numb sensation left her brain. She raised her blue eyes and gave him (unconsciously) the sideway glance she had used with such effect at the court of France.
“They think it was for my jewels,” she whispered; “but I was in a plot to save the Queen.”
He looked at her very kindly, and she was pleased and flattered to a great degree, for she had believed that the aristocracy still despised her, and this man was obviously an aristocrat.
“What are they keeping us here for?” she asked. “What is going to happen?”
He made no immediate answer, and, looking intently at him, she perceived that his face was slightly distorted–or was it that her vision was distracted and gave this abnormal appearance to others?
A soldier passed them, insolently near; when he had gone the young man answered–
“They must have told you? You were tried yesterday?”