Péron was silent. He, who had come here full of hatred of M. de Nançay, could not bear to strike this blow. She saw it, and, for the first time, wavered in her defiance.
“I pray you speak,” she said hurriedly; “’tis better to know the worst than to be deceived with false hopes.”
“He is in the Palais Cardinal,” Péron replied.
She was agitated now, but uncertain. She gave Péron a searching glance.
“Does he stay of his free will?” she demanded imperiously.
“Mademoiselle,” he replied gently, “I regret to tell you the truth; M. de Nançay is a prisoner.”
“Mère de Dieu!” she cried softly, her face white to the lips.
But her emotion was only momentary. She drew herself up haughtily.
“I thank you for the truth, monsieur,” she said coldly, and turning her back on Péron, she walked slowly into the house.
A strange transformation had taken place in his feelings since he entered the front door, and he went out of the garden now with a grave face. He even forgot that it was his own house that he was leaving, but he remembered to give the guards specific instructions about their duties in watching the place and about courtesy in their treatment of the inmates. He was surprised but gratified to find so few people in the street, and after making some inquiries about M. de Vesson’s sudden departure, he took two of the men who had been in the house with him, and proceeded directly to the Palais Cardinal. In the absence of Richelieu, he made his report to Father Joseph, and was ordered to wait on the cardinal that night for further instructions. The interval of a few hours gave him the much desired opportunity to visit the shop at the sign of Ste. Geneviève. His heart swelled with gratitude at the thought of the fidelity of the clockmaker and his wife, who had sheltered him at their own peril and reared the orphaned and penniless boy at their own expense, and that too without prospect of remuneration. As Péron proceeded from the palace to the shop by the way of the Rue de l’Arbre Sec and St. Honoré, where his childish feet had so often travelled, his thoughts were full of tenderness for the guardians of his infancy and a new emotion which he could not yet define in regard to his new position and prospects. He was not ignorant of the cardinal’s intentions, and knew that he might shortly be proclaimed Marquis de Nançay; yet his thoughts dwelt more on the sting of mademoiselle’s defiance as she stood under the lime-tree in the garden on the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre. He thought more of her pain and mortification at her father’s disgrace than he did of the wrongs which he had to revenge.