“Strange?” questioned the Chevalier.
But André had nothing more to say. The Chevalier looked very seriously at him and then at the dead man. A shiver went through him. “Shall we say a prayer for his soul?” he asked in a hurried, low voice.
André assented in no little surprise, and together they repeated a hasty prayer, and then André carried him away. He could not leave him—this English officer—to the awful mercies of the harpies who preyed on the gallant dead.
“I have had enough of this,” were the Chevalier’s words as they parted, and his gay face was sick. And André had had enough too.
And that night as he munched his supper there was but one thought in his mind. Perhaps an English Denise and an English mother were now on their knees awaiting the news from Fontenoy; but they would never know that last night the son and lover had gone to the cabin of the charcoal-burner and had by an accident seen the face of the masked woman who had striven to betray the French army. To-day Captain Statham, as so many others, had fallen in the performance of his duty. Was that fate or the chance of war? Who could say? With a shudder he recalled the grim words of the little vivandière who had disappeared. But one thing was certain. Whatever secret Captain Statham had learned—if it was a secret—his lips would never reveal it now. And had he, André de Nérac, seen that woman’s face he, too, perhaps, had been found lying where the dead were thickest. “No. 101!” And had he done with “No. 101”? Assuredly not, assuredly not.
CHAPTER XI
IN THE SALON DE LA PAIX AT VERSAILLES
“Mon Dieu! my dear Abbé,” exclaimed the Comtesse des Forges, dropping her cards to let her languishing, heavy-lidded eyes linger on the smiling face of her latest protégé, “you make my blood run cold.”
“Brélan de rois” called the plump Duchesse de Pontchartrain, carefully noting the fact on her tablets before she allowed her suspicions to master her. “But are you quite sure?”
The dandy Abbé St. Victor with the air of a connoisseur compared the Venus on the cover of his snuff-box with the delicately-tinted shoulders of her grace.
“As sure,” he said slowly, “as Madame the Dauphine is dead, rest her poor German soul, and that Monsieur the Dauphin will marry again.”