‘Undo my mantle in haste!’ gasped Madame de Selinville.  ’O Veronique—­you saw—­what destruction!’

’Ah! if my sweet young lady only known how frightful he had become, she had never sacrificed herself,’ sighed Veronique.

’Frightful!  What, with the grave blue eyes that seem like the steady avenging judgment of St. Michael in his triumph in the picture at the Louvre?’ murmured Madame de Selinville; then she added quickly, ’Yes, yes, it is well.  She and you, Veronique, may see him frightful and welcome.  There are other eyes—­make haste, girl.  There—­another handerchief.  Follow me not.’

And Madame de Selinville moved out of the room, past the great state bedroom and the salle beyond, to another chamber where more servants waited and rose at her entrance.

‘Is any one with my father?’

‘No, Madame;’ and a page knocking, opened the door and announced, ‘Madame la Comtesse.’

The Chevalier, in easy deshabille, with a flask of good wine, iced water, and delicate cakes and confitures before him, a witty and licentious epigrammatic poem close under his hand, sat lazily enjoying the luxuries that it had been his daughter’s satisfaction to procure for him ever since her marriage.  He sprang up to meet her with a grace and deference that showed how different a person was the Comtesse de Selinville from Diane de Ribaumont.

‘Ah! ma belle, my sweet,’ as there was a mutual kissing of hands, ’thou art returned.  Had I known thine hour, I had gone down for thy first embrace.  But thou lookest fair, my child; the convent has made thee lovelier than ever.’

‘Father, who think you is here?  It is he—­the Baron.’

‘The Baron?  Eh, father!’ she cried impetuously.  ’Who could it be but one?’

’My child, you are mistaken!  That young hot-head can never be thrusting himself here again.’

’But he is, father; I brought him into Paris in my coach!  I left him at the Ambassador’s.’

’Thou shouldest have brought him here.  There will be ten thousand fresh imbroglios.’

’I could not; he is as immovable as ever, though unable to speak!  Oh, father, he is very ill, he suffers terribly.  Oh, Narcisse!  Ah! may I never see him again!’

‘But what brings him blundering her again?’ exclaimed the Chevalier.  ’Speak intelligibly, child!  I thought we had guarded against that!  He knows nothing of the survivance.’

’I cannot tell much.  He could not open his mouth, and his half-brother, a big dull English boy, stammered out a few words of shocking French against his will.  But I believe they had heard of la pauvre petite at La Sablerie, came over for her, and finding the ruin my brother makes wherever he goes, are returning seeking intelligence and succour for HIM.’

‘That may be,’ said the Chevalier, thoughtfully.  ’It is well thy brother is in Poland.  I would not see him suffer any more; and we may get him back to England ere my son learns that he is here.’