CHAPTER I
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
I, Adrian Trent, now known as Lord Trent, and a captain of Les Mousquetaires Gris, sat in my little salon in the Lion d'Or, in the Rue Louis le Grand in Paris, on Midsummer Day, in the year of our Lord 1726. And in my hand I held a little perfumed billet, which I had turned over in my fingers a dozen times, and had, perhaps, read twice as often. For it recalled to me a strange meeting, and some strange scenes in which I had been concerned when I was but a porte-drapeau. Also it recalled to me some other things far sweeter, which, to a young man, must needs be pleasant recollections—to wit, things such as a lovely face flushed now and again with the colour that adorns the blushing rose of Provence; dark eyes, sometimes as soft as velvet, and sometimes sparkling like ice beneath the winter sun; black hair that once—in an awful moment of fear and extremity—I had seen adown the owner's back, almost to her feet; a supple girlish form, and other charms. A girl whom, although I had not seen her for five years, I had never forgotten, but whom I always strove to forget, because she was wealthy and I was poor; because, although I was a man of good rank in my own country, she was almost of the very highest in hers; because she was, in truth, as far above me as the sun is above the earth. Yet once, for a little while, that girl and I had been the best of friends; once, too, it seemed as if that friendship had been very near to a softer and more tender emotion, and as if Adrian Trent and Ana, Princesa de Carbajal, were falling in love with each other—if they had not already done so.
Whereupon, thinking over all these things, I again turned the letter in my hands, and again I read it.
"So you are back in Paris, I hear," it ran; "and would you not like to see a girl called Damaris whom once you knew? I think you would—perhaps in memory of having saved that girl's life on one occasion;[1] of also having once called her by the prettiest epithet a man can bestow on any woman, and of having been much teased and pestered by that girl. If so, then come to the Marais, to the Rue des Vraies Femmes, and to the house which bears the name of my family, and if you come at the proper time I will give you some chocolate and a bonbon. I wonder if you are much changed, and if you will find me so!
Damaris."
The prettiest epithet a man can bestow on any woman! So she remembered it! remembered that I had called her "sweetheart" in all the impudence of boyhood and the possession of my guidon in the mousquetaires, and when I did not know that she was a princess of one of the most ancient and powerful families in Catalonia, and in possession of enormous estates and great wealth.
But did she remember another thing also—namely, that after being highly indignant with me for my presumption, she had laughed and whispered that pretty word to me in return? Did she remember that? If not, I did. And now I would see for it.
An hour later I was outside the great door of the Hôtel de Carbajal, and a lackey answering my summons, I learned that the Princess was within. Whereon I bade him say that Lord Trent waited below to pay his devoirs to her, if it might be that she would receive him.
"Her Highness expects milor," the man said. "Will milor give himself the trouble to follow me?"
Whereon "milor," attired in his best black satin suit—for, alas! he had but recently returned from England, and the funeral of his father—and silver lace, did follow the man through the great gloomy house, and along corridor after corridor, he thinking all the time of what the fellow had said—that "her Highness expected him." "So," "milor" said to himself, "she knew I would come."