“You are discreet, monsieur!” he said, frowning. “At least you will not refuse to inform me with what offence I am charged?”
“All in good time, M. le Marquis,” I answered, shrugging my shoulders. “Be patient, I beg of you. You have been a soldier yourself. My duty is but to secure your person.”
“But, you have some idea!” he cried impatiently. “Is it not so? Be frank, man!”
“Possibly,” I answered curtly. “With the Stuart in Ireland and a French army at Dunkirk, it needs no long head to discover a reason for depriving so distinguished a soldier as M. de Launay of his present liberty.”
“Truly I should be flattered at my celebrity,” he answered lightly. “But if the liberty of every one of my countrymen at present in England is for the same reason to be so curtailed, you will require to enlarge your prisons, monsieur!”
I was about to reply to this, when——
“What is the meaning of this outrage?”
The words fell clearly and suddenly upon my ears.
I turned in the direction from which the voice proceeded, and I saw that the folding doors beneath the gallery were wide open, and that a woman stood at the head of the stair.
She stood at the head of the stairway, in the full light of the candles, and as my eyes rested upon her face, the dangers and hardships of our journey, nay, the very errand upon which we had come, and the presence of the man at my side, all faded away, and I saw nothing but the face of the woman before me, while in my ears rang the words of the cornet: “She is accounted by some to be the loveliest woman in England.” And I knew that they had not lied.