‘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.  She remembered, nevertheless, a certain desperation of mind, scarce imaginable in the retrospect, by which, trembling, fever-smitten, scorning herself, she had been reduced to hope for Nevil Beauchamp’s coming as for a rescue.  The night of the storm had roused her heart.  Since then his perfect friendliness had lulled, his air of thoughtfulness had interested it; and the fancy that he, who neither reproached nor sentimentalized, was to be infinitely compassionated, stirred up remorse.  She could not tell her friend Agnes of these feelings while her feelings were angered against her friend.  So she talked lightly of ‘the legitimate king,’ and they embraced:  a situation of comedy quite as true as that presented by the humble admirers of the brilliant chatelaine.