On the morrow, which was a Friday and the tenth of November—a date to be hereafter graven on the memory of all concerned in the affairs of Condillac—the Dowager rose betimes, and, for decency’s sake, having in mind the business of the day, she gowned herself in black.
Betimes, too, the Lord Seneschal rode out of Grenoble, attended by a couple of grooms, and headed for Condillac, in doing which—little though he suspected it—he was serving nobody’s interests more thoroughly than Monsieur de Garnache’s.
Madame received him courteously. She was in a blithe and happy mood that morning—the reaction from her yesterday’s distress of mind. The world was full of promise, and all things had prospered with her and Marius. Her boy was lord of Condillac; Florimond, whom she had hated and who had stood in the way of her boy’s advancement, was dead and on his way to burial; Garnache, the man from Paris who might have made trouble for them had he ridden home again with the tale of their resistance, was silenced for all time, and the carp in the moat would be feasting by now upon what was left of him; Valerie de La Vauvraye was in a dejected frame of mind that augured well for the success of the Dowager’s plans concerning her, and by noon at latest there would be priests at Condillac, and, if Marius still wished to marry the obstinate baggage, there would be no difficulty as to that.
It was a glorious morning, mild and sunny as an April day, as though Nature took a hand in the Dowager’s triumph and wished to make the best of its wintry garb in honour of it.
The presence of this gross suitor of hers afforded her another source of satisfaction. There would no longer be the necessity she once had dreaded of listening to his suit for longer than it should be her pleasure to be amused by him. But when Tressan spoke, he struck the first note of discord in the perfect harmony which the Dowager imagined existed.
“Madame,” said he, “I am desolated that I am not a bearer of better tidings. But for all that we have made the most diligent search, the man Rabecque has not yet been apprehended. Still, we have not abandoned hope,” he added, by way of showing that there was a silver lining to his cloud of danger.
For just a moment madame’s brows were knitted. She had forgotten Rabecque until now; but an instant’s reflection assured her that in forgetting him she had done him no more than such honour as he deserved. She laughed, as she led the way down the garden steps—the mildness of the day and the brightness of her mood had moved her there to receive the Seneschal.
“From the sombreness of your tone one might fear your news to be of the nature of some catastrophe. What shall it signify that Rabecque eludes your men? He is but a lackey after all.”
“True,” said the Seneschal, very soberly; “but do not forget, I beg, that he is the bearer of letters from one who is not a lackey.”
The laughter went out of her face at that. Here was something that had been lost sight of in the all-absorbing joy of other things. In calling the forgotten Rabecque to mind she had but imagined that it was no more than a matter of the tale he might tell—a tale not difficult to refute, she thought. Her word should always weigh against a lackey’s. But that letter was a vastly different matter.