“Ah! well,” she said, controlling herself. “I know now that you will never discover the secret of ‘No. 101’—never!”
“I shall,” he answered, with unfaltering confidence, “I shall succeed because I must.”
She shrugged her shoulders with scorn. “Open that window,” she commanded, in the most matter-of-fact tone, “before you leave you had better be sure the King’s police are not waiting for you.”
With the key of the door in his pocket André quietly threw the shutters open and peered out.
“Well? No one?” said a voice at his elbow. “I fear, Vicomte, I cannot wait while you make up your mind what you will do with me. You will hear interesting news at Versailles to-morrow. Thank you. Good-night!”
A sharp push, the vision of two small boots, and a flutter of short skirts, and she had lightly vaulted into the street. When André recovered his balance the darkness of the network of slums had swallowed her. Tricked and baffled again by a woman, and with these questions above all crying out for an answer: why had he mistaken her for the Chevalier? Was she really in love with him? And was she an agent of the plotters against Madame de Pompadour?
CHAPTER XX
AT HOME WITH A CIPHER
Midnight had struck, the same night, more than an hour ago; the black and squalid Carrefour of St. Antoine was deserted; the houses that fringed it lay in darkness, yet in the main salon of one of them, though they could not be discerned by a passer-by, the lights still blazed, for the shutters were closed and bolted, the thick double curtains were drawn tight. On the table in the centre of the room were ample traces that two persons had recently supped, and supped sumptuously. But there was only one now in the room, a woman copying from a roll of manuscript, and absorbed in her task. Save for the monotonous tick of the clock, and a curious muffled murmur which trickled through a door that faced the main entry, the silence in the strangely brilliant glare of the numerous candelabra was oppressively eery. Presently the woman threw down her pen and walked with a quick but graceful step in front of one of the many long mirrors that lined the walls. She inspected herself with a charmingly insolent cynicism. The glass, with truthful admiration, flashed back the reflection of a supple and exquisitely moulded figure, fair hair, bright blue eyes, and a skin on face, neck, and shoulders amazingly delicate in its blended tints of snow and rose. A young woman this, in the heyday of health and beauty, noble of birth, too, if the refinement of her features, and the ease and dignity of her carriage, did not strangely lie; and at every movement the costly jewels in her hair and on her breast, in her artfully simple dress, and on her fingers, only heightened the challenge to the homage claimed by her youth and beauty. Very soon, however, she ceased to find pleasure in looking at herself. A soft pathos swept over the artificial audacity of her eyes and lips. She sat down, her elbows on her knees, then stretched her arms wearily and sighed that most pathetic of all sighs, a sigh from a young woman’s heart.
Suddenly she sprang up, and, after listening attentively, seized a hand lamp and left the room. When she returned, it was with a man, who flung off his cloak and stood blinking now at her, now at the brilliant lights.
“So it is you they have sent?” she said contemptuously; “you!”