“And I will save you yet, Marquise.”
She looked at him, fixedly. “Vicomte,” she moaned, with an exceeding bitter cry, “save me. Yes, save me, I implore you.”
Her helplessness and her misery, she, who twenty-four hours ago had been the Queen of Love to the Sovereign of France, did not appeal in vain.
“The King may recover,” he said, “do not fly yet. If in twelve hours I do not return you will never see me again. Then, but not till then, for God’s sake save yourself, Madame.”
“You have a clue—know something?”
“Adieu.”
She strove to keep him, but he bowed himself resolutely out, and he knew she had flung herself back into that chair in front of the fire to watch her fortunes and her ambitions flicker out with the dying flames in the remorseless march of the hours.
This time he boldly left by the public entrance.
Twelve hours! Twelve hours! he had no clue, no information. He had spoken from the infatuation of sheer pity; alas! he had nothing but a fierce and meaningless resolve.
“André,” called softly a voice he knew only too well. Denise was standing in the empty gallery, and in her eyes there was something of the hunted despair and fear Madame de Pompadour had read in his. “André, you have been to see her?”