The saucy grisette, whose demure demeanour could not conceal the shifty falseness of her roving eyes, took to her mistress the name he gave, the “Sieur de Coutances,” and then, to his joy, speedily ushered him with no little ogling into an empty, low-beamed parlour, which was simply the apartment of a woman who could indulge her love of luxury. Of the sorceress trade there were no traces unless you counted for such an enormous black cat with the most ferocious whiskers, who arched his back on André’s entrance and glared at him with diabolical yellow eyes—a cat to make the flesh creep and bristle as did his whiskers.
“Welcome, Vicomte, welcome!”
André found himself staring in the dim light with intense surprise, not at a wizened hag, but at a young woman scarcely more than five-and-twenty, dressed in flowing coal-black draperies which made her wealth of fair hair, blue eyes, and dazzling skin all the more startling. Her dress was wide open at the throat and on her breast flashed an exquisite diamond cross. And what a figure! Those flowing draperies, that step forward revealed a woman perfectly shaped in every limb. It was therefore a shame that above her upper lip there was the suggestion of a dark moustache, though it added in the most extraordinary way to the weird effect of her appearance.
“Welcome, Vicomte, welcome!” she repeated, but she offered him no salute save a wave of her finely shaped hand towards a chair.
“I am not a vicomte,” André answered doggedly.
“Then when did the Vicomte de Nérac lose his rank?” she asked quickly, and laughed at his obvious embarrassment. “Ah, Vicomte, if I were not able to divine who my visitors were I should not have a trinket like this—” she patted her diamond cross, stooped and lifted the huge cat and stroked it gently with her chin.
“And what can I do for you?” she demanded, coming closer.
“My faith, but I do not know,” he answered. The faint perfume of her person was puzzling him sorely. But in truth he was familiar with the perfume of so many women that it was hopeless to expect an answer to the question.
“Nor do I,” the woman answered, still laughing, and her laugh was like the purr of her cat. “In any case, Monsieur le Vicomte must wait. A lady is already here to see me. No, it is not necessary to retire. In spite of that I have said, you doubt my powers; therefore you shall listen while she and I talk.”
She pointed to a large screen and André, now burning with curiosity, gladly seated himself behind it. The woman with the cat still in her arms promptly flung herself on to a long sofa and rang her hand-bell.