“Come, my friend,” the vivandière whispered, “look at yourself. It is too droll.”
He took the mirror from her and laughed—laughed loud and long. Here was, indeed, a picture of a ruffian with a uniform torn and singed, the paint smeared over his cheeks, one sleeve cut away, and his left arm bandaged! Pah! that was where Statham had stabbed him. He would pay for it to-morrow—no, to-day—to-day.
“I found the papers when you fainted,” said the vivandière. “I wept when I found them, for I was sick with fear that you had failed, and now, mon ami, I take them to Monseigneur le Maréchal.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle, they are yours.”
Then André told his story while she listened eagerly. But he did not tell her all, for instinctively he felt some things he had discovered that night had better be locked as a secret in his own heart until he knew more.
“I do not think that was ‘No. 101,’” she remarked thoughtfully. “But it is a pity you did not see her face. Some day hereafter it might be useful to be able to recognise that woman.”
“Perhaps so,” he assented, and he added to himself, “I shall see it before I die. It is written in the stars.” For the curious thought haunted his mind that if he had seen that woman’s face he would never have returned. Yet Captain Statham had seen it; suddenly his cry, his look in that narrow passage, rose before him. Was it what he had seen which had shot such awful fear and horror into his eyes? Could it be that the girl in the mask was—ah! he must wait before the question was answered. And the answer would certainly come. That too was written in the stars.
“And now sleep, Vicomte,” his companion whispered. “In four hours the dawn will be here. A battle is at hand, and once more you must fight for the fair eyes of your mistress, for the honour of France and the King.”
She half-carried him to the bed. The flame-red pictures of the night kept shooting through a blackness of pain in his eyes. How tired and weak he was. From far away a trumpet note rang, a drum throbbed, a snatch of revelling song bubbled mockingly up:
“Et son amour ridicule,