“No, Madame.”
“What? They did not dare?” She laughed. “No matter. The King is mine.”
“The paper has been stolen,” he said quietly, “and the thief has escaped.”
Madame put her hand on her breast, tottered back a step or two. Her radiant eyes grew cold. Incredulity and fear made her an old woman. “Stolen? escaped? Do you mean——?”
“They fooled me. The hour was midnight, as I told you. I have been here three times waiting; the thief never came, but the paper is gone.”
The meaning of his words trickled into her mind. With a cry of rage she sprang at the escritoire and turned it upside down. Then she hurled it into the centre of the room, and wheeled on André. “Ah, misérable, coquin, lâche!” the hot, incoherent words tumbled over each other. “You have failed. It is me you have fooled, betrayed. Ah, traitor, you are my foe; gone, Seigneur Jésu, gone! Stolen; then I am ruined; ruined; after all I have done.” She burst into tears, racked by rage, terror, despair.
“I am no traitor.”
“Bah! I have done with you.” She paced up and down. “Ah! that accursed ‘No. 101,’ accursed; what can I do? Ruined, ruined!” she sank into a chair with a low moan.
André watched the candle-light flicker on her hair and breast, on the shimmering folds of the beautiful dress she had so unerringly selected to aid in reconquering Louis. But a woman’s beauty, genius, and passion, and ambition had fought in vain, for “No. 101” was stronger than all of these.
Suddenly she rose with an exclamation of vindictive and unholy exultation. She had picked a jewelled pendant from the floor. “Ha!” she cried, “here is proof of the thief you could not catch. Mademoiselle Denise has been here; that jewel is hers and it fell by the escritoire table; it is not ‘No. 101’ who has stolen the despatch, it is the Marquise de Beau Séjour.”