So significant was her expression that poor Kourbsky turned from purple to white.
“They shall be kept, O Princess,” he stammered; “on my head be it!”
“On your head be it!” she replied, and walked slowly out of the room, leaving us surrounded by our guards, and at the tender mercy of the angry chamberlain, who had a double cause to hate us.
XIII: THE TOCSIN
IN a little while Maître le Bastien and I found ourselves locked in an unused guard-room of the terem, and for company we had the rogue, Michaud. If my scorn had not been equal to my anger, I would have beaten him, but the vermin was not worthy of chastisement from a gentleman. The goldsmith had seated himself in the centre of the room at a table, and was strumming on it with idle fingers, his sober glance bent on the culprit. Michaud, meanwhile, feeling our wrath, and, no doubt, conscience-stricken, stood in the farthest corner, hang-dog in expression, his face drawn and his lips bloodless, while he linked and unlinked his hands before him in a fever of unrest.
“You are an ungrateful dog,” his master said to him at last. “But for me, you would be grovelling for bread in the gutters of the rue de Boucherie. I made you.”
Michaud raised his eyes sullenly.
“I did not mean to harm you, Maître le Bastien,” he said. “I did not know that it would hurt you.”
“You villain!” I exclaimed sharply, “did I not tell you?”
He stared at me. “I did not believe you,” he replied bluntly. “I thought it was some trick of yours—for your own advancement—and I would spoil it. I was tired of your airs; you think yourself better than you are!”