‘Oh!’ cried Renee, ’do not say it, if ever you should imagine it.  Bid Roland speak of him.  He is changed, oppressed:  I did him a terrible wrong . . . .’  She checked herself.  ’But the chief thing to do is to keep M. d’Henriel away from him.  I suspect M. d’Orbec of a design to make them clash:  and you, my dear, will explain why, to flatter me.  Believe me, I thirst for flattery; I have had none since M. Beauchamp came:  and you, so acute, must have seen the want of it in my face.  But you, so skilful, Agnes, will manage these men.  Do you know, Agnes, that the pride of a woman so incredibly clever as you have shown me you are should resent their intrigues and overthrow them.  As for me, I thought I could command M. d’Henriel, and I find he has neither reason in him nor obedience.  Singular to say, I knew him just as well a week back as I do now, and then I liked him for his qualities—­or the absence of any.  But how shall we avoid him on the road to Dianet?  He is aware that we are going.’

‘Take M. Beauchamp by boat,’ said Madame d’Auffray.

‘The river winds to within a five minutes’ walk of Dianet; we could go by boat,’ Renee said musingly.  ’I thought of the boat.  But does it not give the man a triumph that we should seem to try to elude him?  What matter!  Still, I do not like him to be the falcon, and Nevil Beauchamp the . . . little bird.  So it is, because we began badly, Agnes!’

‘Was it my fault?’

‘Mine.  Tell me:  the legitimate king returns when?’

‘In two days or three.’

‘And his rebel subjects are to address him—­how?’

Madame d’Auffray smote the point of a finger softly on her cheek.

‘Will they be pardoned?’ said Renee.

‘It is for him to kneel, my dearest.’

’Legitimacy kneeling for forgiveness is a painful picture, Agnes.  Legitimacy jealous of a foreigner is an odd one.  However, we are women, born to our lot.  If we could rise en masse!—­but we cannot.  Embrace me.’

Madame d’Auffray embraced her, without an idea that she assisted in performing the farewell of their confidential intimacy.

When Renee trifled with Count Henri, it was playing with fire, and she knew it; and once or twice she bemoaned to Agnes d’Auffray her abandoned state, which condemned her, for the sake of the sensation of living, to have recourse to perilous pastimes; but she was revolted, as at a piece of treachery, that Agnes should have suggested the invitation of Nevil Beauchamp with the secret design of winning home her husband to protect her.  This, for one reason, was because Beauchamp gave her no notion of danger; none, therefore, of requiring protection; and the presence of her husband could not but be hateful to him, an undeserved infliction.  To her it was intolerable that they should be brought into contact.  It seemed almost as hard that she should have to dismiss Beauchamp to preclude their meeting.