La Boulaye shrugged his shoulders.
“I spoke over-confidently when I said that I could obtain you the Vicomte's pardon. There proved to be a factor on which I had not counted. Nevertheless, what I had promised I must fulfil. I was by honour bound to leave nothing undone that might result in the Vicomte's enlargement.”
Ornbreval laughed softly, but with consummate amusement.
“A sans-culotte with a sense of honour is such an anomaly—” he began, when Mademoiselle interposed, a note of anger sounding in her voice.
“M. d'Ombreval means to pay you a compliment,” she informed La Boulaye, “but he has such an odd way of choosing his expressions that I feared you might misunderstand him.”
La Boulaye signified his indifference by a smile.
“I am afraid the ci-devant Vicomte has not yet learnt his lesson,” said he; “or else he is like the sinner who upon recovering health forgot the penitence that had come to him in the days of sickness. But we have other matters to deal with, Citoyenne, and, in particular, the matter of the passport. Fool that I am!” he cried bitterly.
“I must return to Paris at once,” he announced briskly. “There is no help for it. We will hope that as yet the way is open to me, and that I shall be permitted to go and to return unmolested. In such a case the rest is easy—except that you will have to suffer my company as far as the frontier.”
It was Mademoiselle who accompanied him to the door.
“Monsieur,” she said, in a voice that shook with the sincere intensity of her feelings, “think me not ungrateful that I have said so little. But your act has overwhelmed me. It is so truly noble, that to offer you thanks that are but words, seems tome little short of a banality.”