“Now, Lady Betty had in her hand a large green fan.”
The name of his adversary and the cause of the quarrel remained a mystery; but there was a suspicion that the Abbé de Ronceray knew something about it. It so happened that he had that very day received ordination as a priest, after having spent more than thirty years with the reputation of a peculiarly dashing beau sabreur, and having reached the rank of commandant of battalion. He had gone to Fontainebleau in the afternoon, at the urgent request of the old curé, who happened to be ill and to need the services of an assistant. About dusk the new-made priest was sitting with the curé, when a servant came upstairs and, with a scared face, told De Ronceray that a gentleman, evidently an officer, was downstairs in the little salon and was in deep agitation. Would M. de Ronceray come at once?
The new-made priest went down, carrying a lighted candle in his hand, being unfamiliar with the house. As he entered the salon a young man in uniform arose, and, before the priest could get a look at him, blew out the candle, leaving them in darkness.
Having been used to danger all his life, this little occurrence only caused De Ronceray to say coolly, “Well, my friend, just as you like. If you prefer the darkness—”
The officer’s response was to close and lock the door, to which De Ronceray made no objection. The two remained locked in the room, and in darkness, conversing in whispers, for half an hour, when a knock came at the door. The officer responded by dropping through the window on the priest’s flower-bed, and then took briskly to his heels. De Ronceray opened the door and almost ran into the arms of young De Bourmont. The two had known each other, as a subaltern and a commandant might, and De Bourmont had come to pay his respects to his old chief. De Ronceray was charmed to see him, and the two sat up half the night conversing. De Bourmont, before then, had been somewhat irreligious, but a change for the better was noted in him after that night, and he and the ex-commandant became fast friends.
When the tragedy of Angus Macdonald’s death that evening became known, De Ronceray said nothing about his mysterious visitor—whose face he had not seen, and whose voice, except in whispers, he had not heard. But the servant, like most of her kind, was unable to hold her tongue and gave a brilliantly picturesque description of it, not forgetting the incident of De Bourmont’s visit. The story, in going from mouth to mouth, naturally had many additions and emendations, and it was whispered abroad that De Bourmont was the slayer of the young Scotch officer. But the days of storm and stress were at hand then, and such a trifle as the loss of a single life made the less stir when lives went down before the red revolution as the ripe wheat before the sickle.
The story reached the ears of the broken-hearted young sister, but in such form that she only knew it was thought that De Ronceray knew something concerning Angus Macdonald’s murderer. Alone, except for the elderly infant known as Madame Mirabel, and preparing to return to Scotland through the storm of the Revolution, Lady Betty had no means, and indeed no wish, to know the name of her brother’s murderer. Angus could never come back—the rest mattered little.
At last the two women—Lady Betty being entitled to be called a woman for her spirit and sharp intelligence rather than by reason of her years—reached the eyry in the Highlands which was the home of the Macdonalds of Stair.
It was a melancholy life enough for the two during the next few years. Madame Mirabel, with the singular fortitude that those shallow, trifling people of the French court showed generally in their misfortunes, bore her exile without a word of complaint. The climate, the people, the fare, the bagpipes, even the heather that made the towering peaks about them to be clothed in royal purple, she hated with all her French soul,—but she said no word. As for Lady Betty, who was as proud as any Highland chieftain ever was, she would rather have died than uttered one complaint. The old laird was that not uncommon character a hundred years ago, a Highlandman, half savage and half courtier, who talked more Gaelic and more French than he did English, almost found consolation for the loss of his only son in the charm and tenderness of his only daughter. For her sake he even gave up having those noisy drinking bouts at his house when a score of Highland gentlemen would assemble and spend, not hours, but days, “on the lee side of a bowl of punch.” On one of these occasions, Sandy Macgowan, one of the inferior gentry, having been observed to sit perfectly still for several hours, a cursory examination revealed that Sandy was dead. This trifling accident did not interrupt the proceedings though, and the old laird’s reply, some days after, to Madame Mirabel’s volubly expressed horror, was brief and to the point:—