"No, monsieur, it is not his Grace yet; you are all impatience to meet him, I see, and my poor company makes little amends for his absence; but it is as I say, he will not be back for another hour. You are interested, doubtless, in the oddities of human nature; for me I am continually laughing at the transparency of the stratagems whereby men like my husband try to lock their hearts up like a garden and throw away the key before they come into the company of their wives. I'm _sure_ your poor feet must be cold. You did not drive? Such a night of snow too! I cannot approve of your foible for dancing-shoes to wade through snow in such weather. As I was saying, you are not only the stupid s.e.x sometimes, but a most transparent one. I will let you into a little secret that may convince you that what I say of our Count What's-his-name not being hunted is true. I see quite clearly that the Duke is delighted to have this scandal of a duel--oh! the shocking things, duels, Monsieur Soi-disant!--shut up. In the forenoon he was mightily vexed with that poor Count What-do-you-call-him for a purely personal reason that I may tell you of later, but mainly because his duty compelled him to secure the other party to the--let us say, outrage. You follow, Monsieur Soi-disant?"

"_Parfaitement_, Madame la d.u.c.h.esse," said Count Victor, wondering where all this led to.

"I am a foolish sentimentalist, I daresay you may think--for a person of my age (are you quite comfortable, monsieur? I fear that chair does not suit you)--I am a foolish sentimentalist, as I have said, and I may tell you I pleaded very hard for the release of this luckless compatriot of yours who was then in the fosse. But, oh dear! his Grace was adamant, as is the way with dukes, at least in this country, and I pleaded in vain."

"Naturally, madame; his Grace had his duty as a good subject."

"Doubtless," said the d.u.c.h.ess; "but there have been occasions in history, they a.s.sure me, when good subjects have been none the less nice husbands. Monsieur can still follow me?"

Count Victor smiled and bowed again, and wished to heaven her Grace the d.u.c.h.ess had a little more of the gift of expedition. He had come looking for a sword and found a sermon.

"I know I weary you," she went on complacently. "I was about to say that while the Duke desires to do his duty, even at the risk of breaking his wife's heart, it was obvious to me he was all the time sorry to have to do it, and when we heard that our Frenchman had escaped I, take my word for it, was not the only one relieved."

"I do not wonder, madame," said Montaiglon, "that the subject in this case should capitulate to--to--to the--"

"To the loving husband, you were about to say. La! you are too gallant, monsieur, I declare. And as a matter of fact the true explanation is less to my husband's credit and less flattering to me, for he had his own reasons."

"One generally has," reflected the Count aloud.

"Quite! and in his case they are very often mine. Dear Archie! Though he did not think I knew it, I saw clearly that he had his own reasons, as I say, to wish the Frenchman well out of the country. Now could you guess what these reasons were?"

Count Victor confessed with shame that it was beyond him.

"I will tell you. They were not his own interests, and they were not mine, that influenced him; I had not to think very hard to discover that they were the interests of the Chamberlain. I fancy his Grace knows that the less inquiry there is into this encounter the better for all concerned."

"I daresay, Madame la d.u.c.h.esse," agreed Count Victor, "and yet the world speaks well of the Chamberlain, one hears."

"Woe unto you when all men speak well of you!" quoted the d.u.c.h.ess sententiously.

"It only happens when the turf is in our teeth," said the Count, "and then _De mortuis_ is a motto our dear friends use more as an excuse than as a moral."

"I do not like our Chamberlain, monsieur; I may frankly tell you so.

I should not be surprised to learn that my husband knows a little more about him than I do, and I give you my word I know enough to consider him hateful."

"These are most delicate considerations, Madame la d.u.c.h.esse," said the Count, vastly charmed by her manner but naturally desirous of the open air. Every step he heard in neighbouring lobbies, every slammed door, spoiled his attention to the lady's confidences, and he had an uneasy sense that she was not wholly unamused at his predicament, however much his friend.

"Delicate considerations, true, but I fear they do not interest Monsieur Soi-disant. How should they indeed? Gossip, monsieur, gossip! At our age, as you might say, we must be chattering. I _know_ you are uncomfortable on that chair. Do, monsieur, please take another."

This time he was convinced of his first suspicion that she was having her revenge for his tactless remark to her husband, for he had not stirred at all in his chair, but had only reddened, and she had a smile at the corners of her mouth.

"At my age, Madame la d.u.c.h.esse, we are quite often impertinent fools.

There is, however, but one age--the truly golden. We reach it when we fall first in love, and there love keeps us. His Grace, Madame la d.u.c.h.esse, is, I am sure, the happiest of men."

She was seated opposite him. Leaning forward a little, she put forth her hand in a motherly, unembarra.s.sed way, and placed it for a moment on his knee, looking into his face, smiling.

"Good boy! good boy!" she said.

And then she rose as if to hint that it was time for him to go.

"I see you are impatient; perhaps you may meet the Duke on his way back."

"Charmed, Madame la d.u.c.h.esse, I a.s.sure you," said the Count with a grimace, and they both fell into laughing.

She recovered herself first to scan the shoes and coat again. "How droll!" said she. "Ah, monsieur, you are delightful in your foibles, but I wish it had looked like any other coat than Simon Mac-Taggart's.

I have never seen his without wondering how many dark secrets were underneath the velvet. Had this coat of yours been a perfect fit, believe me I had not expected much from you of honour or of decency.

Oh! there I go on chattering again, and you have said scarcely twenty words."

"Believe me, Madame la d.u.c.h.esse, it is because I can find none good enough to express my grat.i.tude," said Count Victor, making for the door.

"Pooh! Monsieur Soi-disant, a fig for your grat.i.tude! Would you have me inhospitable to a guest who would save me even the trouble of opening my door? And that, by the way, reminds me, monsieur, that you have not even hinted at what you might be seeking his Grace for? Could it be--could it be for a better fit in coats?"

"For a mere trifle, madame, no more than my sword."

"Your sword, monsieur? I know nothing of Monsieur Soi-disant's sword, but I think I know where is one might serve his purpose."

With these words she went out of the room, hurried along the corridor, and returned in a moment or two with Count Victor's weapon, which she dragged back by its belt as if she loathed an actual contact with the thing itself.

"There!" she said, affecting a shudder. "A mouse and a rapier, they are my bitterest horrors. If you could only guess what a coward I am! Good night, monsieur, and I hope--I hope"--she laughed as she hung on the wish a moment--"I hope you will meet his Grace on the way. If so, you may tell him 'tis rather inclement weather for the night air--at his age," and she laughed again. "If you do not see him--as is possible--come back soon; look! my door bids you in your own language--_Revenez bientot_. I am sure he will be charmed to see you, and to make his delight the more I shall never mention you were here tonight."

She went along the lobby and looked down the stair to see that the way was clear; came back and offered her hand.

"Madame la d.u.c.h.esse, you are very magnanimous," he said, exceedingly grateful.

"Imprudent, rather," she corrected him.

"Magnanimity and Prudence are cousins who, praise _le bon Dieu!_ never speak to each other, and the world is very much better for it." He pointed to the motto on the panel. "I may never come back, madame," said he, "but at least I shall never forget."

"_Au plaisir de vous revoir_, Monsieur Soi-disant," she said in conclusion, and went into her room and closed the door.

"Now there's a darling!" said the d.u.c.h.ess as she heard his footsteps softly departing. "Archie was just such another--at his age."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII -- BACK IN DOOM

The night brooded on the Highlands when Count Victor reached the sh.o.r.e. Snow and darkness clotted in the clefts of the valleys opening innumerably on the sea, but the hills held up their heads and thought among the stars--unbending and august and pure, knowing nothing at all of the glens and shadows. It was like a convocation of spirits. The peaks rose everywhere white to the brows and vastly ruminating. An ebbing tide too, so that the strand was bare. Upon the sands where there had been that folly of the morning the waves rolled in an ascending lisp, spilled upon at times with gold when the decaying moon--a halbert-head thrown angrily among Ossian's flying ghosts, the warrior clouds--cut through them sometimes and was so reflected in the sea. The sea was good; good to hear and smell; the flying clouds were grateful to the eye; the stars--he praised G.o.d for the delicious stars not in words but in an exultation of grat.i.tude and affection, yet the mountain-peaks were most of all his comforters.

He had run from the castle as if the devil had been at his red heels, with that ridiculous coat flapping its heavily braided skirts about his calves; pa.s.sed through snow-smothered gardens, bordered boding dark plantations of firs, leaped opposing fell-d.y.k.es whence sheltering animals ran terrified at the apparition, and he came out upon the seaside at the bay as one who has overcome a nightmare and wakens to see the familiar friendly glimmer of the bedroom fire.

A miracle! and mainly worked by a glimpse of these blanched hills. For he knew now they were an inseparable part of his memory of Olivia, _her_ hills, _her_ sheltering sentinels, the mere sight of them Doom's orison.

Though he had thought of her so much when he shivered in the fosse, it had too often been as something unattainable, never to be seen again perhaps, a part of his life past and done with. An incubus rode his chest, though he never knew till now, when it fled at the sight of Olivia's constant friends the mountains. Why, the girl lived! her home was round the corner there dark-jutting in the sea! He could, with some activity, be rapping at her father's door in a couple of hours!

"_Grace de Dieu!_" said he, "let us leave trifles and go home."

It was a curious sign of his preoccupation, ever since he had escaped from his imprisonment, that he should not once have thought on where he was to fly to till this moment when the hills inspired. "Silence, thought, calm, and purity, here they are!" they seemed to tell him, and by no means unattainable. Where (now that he had time to think of it) could he possibly go to-night but to the shelter of Doom? Let the morrow decide for itself. _a demain les affaires serieuses!_ Doom and--Olivia.

What eyes she had, that girl! They might look upon the a.s.sailant of her wretched lover with anything but favour; yet even in anger they were more to him than those of all the world else in love.