"The contract of marriage, they said, had actually been signed by the King——"
"Go on, you are a snail!" snapped the Canoness.
"Only then was it discovered that his father had amassed a fortune in ox-skins, that the son had picked up some manners, riding, fencing, and blazonry; none knows how; and that his first introductions were bought and paid for. He is now, some say, in the Bastille, some in Vincennes Dungeon, nobody will ever know exactly which. That is all, ladies."
"Let us thank the saints for Mademoiselle's deliverance!" cried the Princess piously.
Cyrène gasped and said nothing, but tears filled her eyes.
"The horror of but touching one of those creatures—those diners in the kitchen!" exclaimed the Canoness.
"Of his daring to approach a lady in marriage!" added Mademoiselle de Richeval.
"Were she one of my blood, he should die," asserted d'Estaing.
An uncanny, silent light passed across the half-shut eyes of Abbé Jude, and gleamed towards one and another of these haughty exclusives as they talked together so regardlessly before the face of him they thought the only plebeian among them. His eye at last met that of Lecour, and he caught a confusion on the Canadian's countenance which he stored away carefully with the words of de Bailleul.
The evening fell, and a faint silver moon rose in the sky and grew brighter and brighter over park and mere. The Princess went in to play cards, followed by the others. Germain and the Baroness walked up and down the terrace alone, talking of the stars and the delightful speculations about them in the book of Fontenelle.