But if her dress was sombre, it was atoned for by the magnificence of her companion.  He was a man who might have been ten years her senior, with a keen soldier face, small well-marked features, a carefully trimmed black moustache, and a dark hazel eye which might harden to command a man, or soften to supplicate a woman, and be successful at either.  His coat was of sky-blue, slashed across with silver braidings, and with broad silver shoulder-straps on either side.  A vest of white calamanca peeped out from beneath it, and knee-breeches of the same disappeared into high polished boots with gilt spurs upon the heels.  A silver-hilted rapier and a plumed cap lying upon a settle beside him completed a costume which was a badge of honour to the wearer, for any Frenchman would have recognised it as being that of an officer in the famous Blue Guard of Louis the Fourteenth.  A trim, dashing soldier he looked, with his curling black hair and well-poised head.  Such he had proved himself before now in the field, too, until the name of Amory de Catinat had become conspicuous among the thousands of the valiant lesser noblesse who had flocked into the service of the king.

They were first cousins, these two, and there was just sufficient resemblance in the clear-cut features to recall the relationship.  De Catinat was sprung from a noble Huguenot family, but having lost his parents early he had joined the army, and had worked his way without influence and against all odds to his present position.  His father’s younger brother, however, finding every path to fortune barred to him through the persecution to which men of his faith were already subjected, had dropped the “de” which implied his noble descent, and he had taken to trade in the city of Paris, with such success that he was now one of the richest and most prominent citizens of the town.  It was under his roof that the guardsman now sat, and it was his only daughter whose white hand he held in his own.

“Tell me, Adele,” said he, “why do you look troubled?”

“I am not troubled, Amory,”

“Come, there is just one little line between those curving brows.  Ah, I can read you, you see, as a shepherd reads the sky.”

“It is nothing, Amory, but—­”

“But what?”

“You leave me this evening.”

“But only to return to-morrow.”

“And must you really, really go to-night?”

“It would be as much as my commission is worth to be absent.  Why, I am on duty to-morrow morning outside the king’s bedroom!  After chapel-time Major de Brissac will take my place, and then I am free once more.”

“Ah, Amory, when you talk of the king and the court and the grand ladies, you fill me with wonder.”

“And why with wonder?”

“To think that you who live amid such splendour should stoop to the humble room of a mercer.”

“Ah, but what does the room contain?”

“There is the greatest wonder of all.  That you who pass your days amid such people, so beautiful, so witty, should think me worthy of your love, me, who am such a quiet little mouse, all alone in this great house, so shy and so backward!  It is wonderful!”