She had divined his mind again. To speak with the fair huntress was the resolve that had mastered him. And to his satisfaction Madame no sooner recognised him than she beckoned with her fan, smiling a shy and intoxicating welcome.
André kissed her hand, looking into her eyes, imperial eyes in which slumbered imperial ambitions, such wonderful eyes, now blue, now grey, now softly dark as the violet, now glittering with the lightest mockery. “Un morceau de roi,” he muttered. “Yes, by God! a morceau de roi!”
“Conduct me to yonder pillar,” she said presently, “we can talk better there.”
But that was not her reason, for to reach the pillar they must pass near the King. Clearly Madame d’Étiolles was bent on playing to-night the game of the woods at closer quarters. André as he escorted her now felt that all eyes, including Denise’s, were on him, but he enjoyed it, walking slowly on the giddiest tiptoes of bravado. In front of Louis, he paused to make his reverence. Madame paused too, and as she unslung her quiver to curtsey with more graceful ease André could feel her tremble. The King’s roaming gaze rested on them both. André’s salute he acknowledged with a smile, a word or two of kind greeting, but it was on the jewels on the breast of the huntress that his bored eyes lingered.
“Fair archeress,” he said, “surely the shafts you loose are mortal.”
Madame d’Étiolles flushed with pleasure, curtsied again, and promptly passed on, without attempting to reply.
“Mon Dieu! what a figure! Who the devil is she?” André heard one of the gentlemen of the Chamber mutter.
“You did that to perfection,” his partner whispered by the pillar. “You are a man who understands women, and they are so rare. And now we will dance if you please.”
The sorceress was right. Madame d’Étiolles danced divinely. She had been taught by the best masters, but it was only art that she owed to their science. The rest was her own.
