The next day the counsellor returned with a batch of receipted bills.
“And I can tell you who was at the bottom of that chase along the Cowgate. ’Twas your precious friend Bastien, who told abroad that you were about leaving secretly for France.”
“The devil!” cried De Bourmont.
He went in hot haste to the anteroom of the gentlemen in waiting, and there sat Bastien at a table, playing patience, while two gentlemen of the suite lounged in a window. De Bourmont went up to Bastien and watched him silently while he worked out his game. Then he said:
“Lend me the cards, Monsieur Bastien. I know a trick worth two of that you are doing.”
Bastien handed him the cards, and De Bourmont, collecting them carefully together, promptly dashed them full in Bastien’s face. “That is for talking with my tradesmen,” he cried.
Of course, next morning, they went out at sunrise to a quiet place near Arthur’s Seat, and lunged at each other for the best part of an hour. De Bourmont escaped with a scratch or two, but Bastien came in for a smart rip in his arm, and—worse luck—for a slight cut across his unfortunate nose, after which the whole party went back to town for breakfast.
De Bourmont had meant to keep it all from Lady Betty, but she got it out of him before twenty-four hours. She was full of contempt, saying:—
“For you to fight Bastien! You ought to have seen him that morning, seven years ago, at Versailles!” and then with blushes and sighs and smiles and lamentings over her own unruly temper, she told him the history of her assault on Bastien’s nose. De Bourmont laughed until he cried, and then, looking at Lady Betty, saw her speaking eyes watching him so gravely—nay, tenderly—that he suddenly stopped laughing and, seizing her hand, cried:—
“Ah, Mademoiselle, nothing but my duty to my country could drag me away from this or any other place, were it the dreariest on earth, so long as you are there.”