My duty to my country was to learn the truth about this gigantic conspiracy; yet, at the same time, my duty towards myself and towards the Princess was to leave Chantoiseau at once and forget all that had occurred. Signs had not been wanting in Paris during the past few days to corroborate what she had told me regarding the conspiracy of certain Powers against the prestige of their hated rival England. There was a lull in diplomatic affairs that was ominous; a distinctly oppressive atmosphere which foreboded a storm.
Far into the night I sat thinking, trying to devise some plan by which I could obtain knowledge of her secret without committing myself. But I could find none—absolutely none.
At early morning, before the others were astir, I took a stroll down the hill to where the clear Seine wound beneath the chalk cliff. The larks were soaring high, filling the air with their song. The boatmen going down-stream shouted wittily to each other between their hands, and the bronzed villagers on their way to work in the vineyards chanted merrily the latest popular airs. Life is easy and prosperous among the peasantry around the Fontainebleau forest. In those clean white villages of the Department of Seine et Marne there is little, if any, poverty. I wandered through the pretty, flower-embowered village of Thomery, and, crossing the river by the long iron bridge, entered the smiling little hamlet of Champagne—a quaint and comely group of small cottages, where lived the vineyard-workers. This hamlet is famous for miles round because of a particularly venomous breed of vipers which infest the sun-kissed lands in its neighbourhood. Although only six o’clock, the prosperous little place was already busy, and as I wandered through the village, past the grey old church, and along the wide, well-kept road beside the river, I smiled to think that the name of that old-world place was known everywhere from Piccadilly to Peru, and was synonymous with wealth, luxury, and riotous living.
Heedless as to where I went, so deeply engaged was I in conflicting feelings and in trying to determine whether I should keep that appointment on the footpath to Moret, at last I found myself in Samoreau, where, crossing by the ferry, I returned to the forest, and at eight o’clock was back again, idling with several of the guests on the lawn in front of the château.
After drinking my coffee, I sat in the window of one of the petit salons that overlooked the valley and took up a pen, meaning to write to my hostess, for I had resolved to send her a note of regret, and return at once to Paris. I could remain there no longer.
Scarcely had I taken the note-paper from the escritoire, when the Baroness de Chalencon entered, fussy as usual and full of the excursion to Barbison.
“Léonie tells me you are not accompanying us,” she cried in French. “I’ve been searching for you everywhere. Why, my dear Gerald, you must come.”
“I regret, Baronne, that I can’t,” I answered. “I have to go to Paris by the midday train.”
“How horribly unsociable you are!” she exclaimed. “Surely you can postpone your journey to Paris! Wolkenstein and the others have declared that we can’t do without you.”
“Express to them my regrets,” I said. “But to-day it is utterly impossible. I must be at the Embassy this afternoon. I have important business there.”