André wiped the sweat off his brow. The woman came close to him. “Supposing,” she said in a low voice, “supposing you had been arrested to-night with that slip of paper in your pocket, would all your services, all your oaths, your nobility, have saved you? Think, my friend, think. I did a bold thing, perhaps, in destroying it, but it was in your interest, Vicomte, not mine.”
André was silent, appalled at her knowledge. The tables had been turned on him with a vengeance, and this astonishing woman was right, which was hardest of all.
“You would know,” she proceeded, divining marvellously his confused thoughts, “how I have all this information. I have my crystal,” she laughed, “but I also hate the King and the woman who rules him. You and she are not the only persons at Versailles to whom it is a matter of life and death to discover the secret of ‘No. 101.’ Monsieur, I am the paid agent of the foes of that wanton, the King’s mistress, and of yourself.”
Unconsciously André’s fingers clutched the hilt of his sword.
“Why do I tell you all this?” she asked in a low voice. “Does that confession amuse or startle you? Am I the first woman who would sacrifice herself for the Vicomte de Nérac or the first to confess her love? No. And to prove I speak the truth I will reveal to you the secret of ‘No. 101’ that I alone have discovered, but on one condition”—she paused to put her hands on both his shoulders—“that you will promise from this moment to abandon Mademoiselle Denise, who is not worthy of you, and to love me alone.”
Dead silence. André stood hypnotised, half by fear, half by the witchery of her womanhood.
“I have beauty, wealth, power,” she whispered caressingly. “Yes, I am as fair a woman as Mademoiselle Denise; I can make you a greater man than Madame de Pompadour can; I can reveal to you the secret that is worth the ransom of the King’s crown; and I love you. Say yes, André, for your own sake; you will never regret it.”
André looked into her blue eyes, so resplendent against the cream tint of her skin, and at her magnificent black hair. Passion and ambition began to sap his will. Then slowly he dragged himself from his intoxicating dream and disengaged her hands.
“No,” he said gently but firmly, “I do not love you. I cannot—I cannot, because,” his voice rang out, “I love Denise.”
She was trembling, he thought, with rage, but there was no rage in her eyes, only a mysterious pity and pathos as of a woman who had staked all on one throw and lost, yet was not wholly sorry.