Denise clasped her hands. “What can we do, Chevalier?” she asked. “What can we do?”
The Chevalier took a step or two up and down. “There are only two courses,” he said very gravely. “Either the Vicomte must be compelled to break with the Pompadour—or—” he paused—“the King must be persuaded to dismiss him from Versailles—in plain words ruin him.”
Denise drew a deep breath. “Ah, God!” she murmured, “that woman, how I hate her! She steals the honourable soldiers of France and corrupts them; she corrupts the King, she wrongs a Queen who has wronged no one. Yes, I hate her because I am a woman, to whom because I believe in God and my noblesse these things are hateful.”
“You are right, Mademoiselle,” sincerity rang in the boyish voice, “to me, too, she is the symbol in a woman’s form of all that is evil in France, and it is your France that will suffer for her ambition and her sins.”
“She will be punished,” said Denise, “God will punish her. Dieu le Vengeur!” she murmured.
The Chevalier had drawn a deep breath. “Dieu le Vengeur!” he repeated to himself almost mockingly. “It is a fine motto, Dieu le Vengeur!”
“It is strange,” she mused, “that you, Chevalier, who were not born a French noble, should feel as we do.”
“You have taught me,” he answered quietly. “Yes, yes, when I entered the King’s service I found a strange court and a strange master. It was you who taught me, what I could scarcely believe, that there are still in France women worthy to be called noble, aye, and men, too. It is for your sake that I work, that I would help to overthrow and punish that low-born adventuress who would ruin the King. No, Marquise,” he added, “I do not forget your warning, and I say no more than this, that your love alone keeps me true to my task, to your—our—cause.”
“I thank you,” she answered with simple dignity. “Let us work for France, Chevalier, and for the right, and we shall win.”
He bid her adieu and vanished, for safety required that he should leave her first. Denise sank back into her seat lost in the bitter thought that André, the friend of her girlhood, the lover of whom for all her indignation she was proud, must either ruin her cause or be ruined by herself and her friends. A step on the gravel startled her.