"Twenty-four hours?"

"Twenty-four."

"Twenty-four hours!" repeated Lecour, dazed. "Can I have the privilege, then, at least, of wearing the uniform until I leave France?"

"That cannot be."

"May I ask but a certificate of having served, with honour in the company?" he gasped.

"It is due solely to those whose original right to have entered the corps is without dispute."

"Alas! all who have known me in my former state will ask why I have ceased to retain it." Pallor and despair seemed to have transformed him.

"Were I not a soldier," sighed Collinot, making a great effort to repress his own feelings, "I should under these painful circ.u.mstances most gladly write you a certificate. Remember me ever as one who would have liked to be your friend."

"Oh, sir, you have been too kind to me," Lecour cried, in a voice of agony, his eyes running tears; and grasping the hand of the Adjutant, he wrung it affectionately, and could speak no further. Sobering himself and turning quickly, he made his exit. Many curious eyes furtively followed him and guessed the secret as he strode along to his apartment.

Grancey came to him in a few moments, furious.

"The whole company holds there was never such a conspiracy--what can we do?"

"Nothing--nothing--nothing."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

ONE DEFENDER

Cyrene pa.s.sed down her favourite oleander path at sunset to the great vinery in the Noailles garden. The oleanders were covered with their roseate blooms, and their beauty and that of the garden in the soft sunset light mysteriously deepened with an undefined regret the sadness and fears which were hers of late.

"Why do you not come to me, Germain? Why have you not at least written me a few words in reply to mine? Only a few words, my dear one--only the least line," she murmured to herself.

She pa.s.sed on to the vinery, where sitting down under the interlaced green she became still more abstracted.

"Oh Germain, some great danger is above you. Who are those enemies of whom the Instrument of Vengeance spoke? What is this web of murder and madness in which they are involving you? I pray G.o.d to keep you safe, my love. Ah, what bliss to have you mine, _mine_, and be yours. At last, at last we shall have somewhere a sweet _chez nous_ to ourselves."

The loveliness of the oleander blossoms and the sunset over the garden made a harmony with her dream. To the widow who had been no wife, the girl who had seen no girlhood, the child who had never had a home, the lady who was losing her life in gilded servitude, that dream was dear.

The sound of a silver bell broke in, the signal that she was in request by old Madame l'Etiquette. A sigh escaped her, and she hastened to the house.

To de Lotbiniere, to have effected his point had not been enough. To humiliate Lecour with the ladies with whom he had ingratiated himself was yet, in the opinion of this vindicator of public interests, demanded by justice to society, so he had wended his way that afternoon to the Hotel de Noailles and applied at the portal of the Marechale. There he was kept waiting while his name was sent in.

"The person is not on my list," she said. "Present my regrets." Covering his irritation with a smiling face, as courtiers must ever learn to do, he asked for ink and paper and patiently wrote her on the spot a respectful and pointed warning on the danger to Cyrene. His missive struck the dominant chord in the breast of Madame.

"What," she cried on reading it "de Lincy a cheat! No questionable person shall ally himself with the royal blood of the Noailles and Montmorencys! This is what comes of relaxing the old rules, the old customs, and admitting new people. It is what comes of this Austrian Queen." Ah--she glanced around quickly to see that none but her lady-in-waiting heard those last words.

"Show the man in," she added. The lady-in-waiting transmitted the order.

De Lotbiniere appeared, and at Madame's request began his narrative.

He had not proceeded far when the Marechale sent for Cyrene. It was the kind of opportunity in which de Lotbiniere gloried. As soon as he commenced she scanned him with intense attention, saying to herself, "This is one of Germain's enemies." As he told his tale he too watched her closely. The courage with which she listened to the development of a story so deeply affecting her honour and her heart, and her perfect dignity, unexpected by him, baffled him, from point to point of his careful narration, where he had expected to produce effects.

"Of all women," he thought, "she is the strangest. Are my skill and effort to be wasted on a girl?" But guessing correctly all at once and rightly attributing her reticence to preparation and distrust of himself, he stopped and said--

"He has doubtless told Madame a very different version."

"He has told me nothing of these things, sir," she answered quietly.

De Lotbiniere was nonplussed, but he had not yet come to the duels. He now mentioned them.

"There have been two duels."

"_Mon dieu!_"

"I hope that your nephew punished him sharply," La Marechale interrupted.

"The brute, unfortunately, has wounded my nephew, Madame."

"Is your brother-in-law, the Marquis de Repentigny, whom you mentioned, he who killed a man named Philibert in Quebec?" now demanded Cyrene.

It was as if a thunderbolt struck de Lotbiniere.

"Who spoke to you of that?" he exclaimed hastily.

"Do you hear?" Cyrene cried excitedly, turning to La Marechale. "Do you hear this admission of murder?"

"It was no murder!" de Lotbiniere interrupted, trembling with feeling.

"You apparently wish some finer term to describe it," she retorted.

"Sir, any charges made to me against my affianced must be supported by individuals more free of terrible records. _I_ shall trust his innocence through eternity." And with these words, uttered frigidly, she left the room, the Marechale looking after her astonished.

Now Germain, having fled from Troyes, came to the hotel. He entered one of the great salons, and, miserable and desperate, sent up his name to Cyrene for a last interview. While he waited to be ushered up, to his surprise, she herself appeared at the end of the salon, advancing with a tearful expression. The sight of her, dragged down into his pit of misery, sent him distracted. All was forgotten for a few moments, as she tearfully clasped him in her arms and murmured--

"Germain, you are no adventurer, no Sillon. Though all the world be against you, I shall die with you."

Intoxicated with surprise that she did not repel him, yet overcome with the belief that it was to be their last embrace, he lost himself for the time in mingled remorse and mad bliss. They clung to each other as so many others have clung in those short moments which are the attar of a lifetime. At length he grew more conscious, and the delirium of holding that face and golden hair to his breast triumphed over the pain of guilt. At that moment they simultaneously perceived a shadow and started.

"Baroness," said a severe voice, "you make me blush for my house."

Cyrene and Germain sprang apart in alarm.

"_You_," Madame l'Etiquette said, addressing Germain, "have dared to enact such a scene here. You, the apothecary's apprentice----"

"Madame," Cyrene cried, her eyes flashing, "withdraw those words! I demand it!"

The situation aroused all his faculties.