“Yvonne!” he laughed heartily.
“Yes, Yvonne. Sometimes there is more in a peasant girl to tempt and ruin than in a Comtesse des Forges, or a marquise—” it was her turn to laugh. “Ah! the Vicomte is a gallant and reckless lover. He thinks as the noblesse think, that women are necessary to him. But it is not so. It is he who is necessary to them.”
“And your fee for the advice, mistress?”
She flung the five gold pieces of Madame d’Étiolles into a drawer. “Madame has paid for both,” she said. “But if the Vicomte de Nérac will offer something of his own, I will accept—a kiss,” and she looked him daringly in the face.
The hall of the Château de Beau Séjour swept in a vision before him. Dieu Le Vengeur seemed to be written in a scroll of fire round the cat’s ruff.
“I understand,” she added with a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders, “though I am not a marquise or a comtesse.”
“You shall have it,” he blurted out with husky petulance.
She put her hand to her diamond cross—they looked at each other—the woman melted into a defiant reverence.
“The horse of Monsieur le Vicomte,” she commanded quickly to the girl who had appeared as if by magic. “Good-day, sir. You can pay the fee to—Yvonne.”
And here he was alone with the shifty-eyed fille de chambre, who plainly gave him an invitation to mistake her for Yvonne.