after?” he asked.
“After?” replied Mornay, lightly. “After? Monsieur, you leave too little to the imagination. I think but of the present. Le bon Dieu will provide for the future.”
Vigot was given his orders to make shrewd inquiries of the servants of the neighbors of Mistress Clerke as to the hour of Captain Ferrers’s daily visits. He was also told to get a coach for monsieur. He stood puzzled a moment.
“Monsieur wishes a haquenée?” he asked.
“A haquenée? No, sirrah!” said Mornay, brusquely.
“A pair, then?” he asked, scratching his head.
“A pair?” roared Mornay. “No, sirrah! Foi de ma vie! I wish a coach and four. Twenty guineas at the very least. If I wait upon madame at night, a dozen links. Be off with you!”
Cornbury shook his head hopelessly.
“Ye’re going to your funeral in style,” he said.
Mistress Barbara sat alone, looking out upon the quiet street. While she looked she saw nothing, and every line of her figure, in abandonment to her mood, spoke of sorrow and distraction. Her eyelids were red, and the richly laced mouchoir which fell from the hand beneath her chin was moist with tears. Upon a tray were the dishes of a luncheon, untouched, and a number of papers, some of them torn, fell from her hand upon the floor. A dish of roses, a few French romances, a manteau girdle, a copy of the Annus Mirabilis of Dryden, a pair of scented gloves of Martial, and a cittern in the corner completed the gently bred disorder of the room.
True, Sir Henry Heywood was no blood relation of hers, and had only been her guardian. A man of the world in the worst rather than the better sense, there had been little in his life to appeal to her. But he loved her in his own way and had been good to her in all matters that pertained to her estate, and so she mourned him as one would mourn the loss of one whom nearness had made dear. There was some bond which seemed to bind them more closely than their mere surface relations of ward and guardian – an undercurrent of devotion and servitude which she felt, though she could not understand the meaning. His death wrung her mind, if it did not wring her heart.
And by this Frenchman! There had been a moment or two of regret the other night that she should have used this Mornay so cruelly, a moment when the bitterness, the grief, the utter loneliness and longing she had seen in his face had filled her rebellious soul with compassion for his misery. For she had a glimpse – the very first – of his pride overborne and beaten to earth in spite of its mighty struggle to rise. But now! Now, whatever regret had sprung into her heart, whatever kindliness, had been engulfed again in a bitterness which cried out for justice. While the woman in her had shrunk from the thought of him and wished him well away from London, a sense of the fitness of things called for retribution for the wrong that had been done her and hers. They had not caught him yet. Oh, he was cunning and skillful; that she knew. But Captain Ferrers had assured her that to oblige Louis of France, the King had directed all the constables of London to be upon the watch for him. It could not be long before they would have him fast behind the walls of the Tower, with God knows what in store for him there, or at the Bastile if he were taken back to France. The Bastile? She shivered a little and put her kerchief over her face.
“God forgive me,” she murmured, “if I have misjudged him!”
There was a commotion below in the street – the sound of galloping horses and the rumble of a fast-flying vehicle. A plum-colored calash with red wheels and splendid equipments was coming at a round pace up the street. There were four sorrel horses, a coachman, footman, and two outriders. With a whirl of dust and the shouting of men the horses were thrown upon their haunches and the coach came to a stop directly before Mistress Barbara’s door. She peered out of the window, curiously agape, to know the identity of her visitor. From the way in which he traveled abroad it must be a person of condition – she felt assured a minister or dignitary of the city, come perhaps to beseech her influence. There was a glimmer of bright color in the sunlight. A splendid figure, periwigged and bonneted in the latest mode, sprang out and to her front door. She had barely time to withdraw her head before there was a knock and her lackey opened in some trepidation.
“Madame, ’tis Monsieur the Vicomte de Bresac – ”
“Did I not give orders – ” she began, and then stopped. “De Bresac! De Bresac! What can it mean?”
“Madame, ’tis a matter of importance and – er – ”
She stood debating whether she should call her governess or deny herself to her visitor, but before she could do the one or the other footsteps came along the hallway and the lackey stepped aside as Monsieur Mornay entered.
Mistress Clerke turned a pallid face towards him. She stepped back a pace or two, her hands upon her breast, her eyes glowing with fear. Monsieur Mornay turned to the lackey, who still stood doubtful upon the threshold. The look he gave the man sent him through the doorway and hall, where the sound of his footsteps mingled with those of others without. Mistress Clerke cast a fleeting glance towards the boudoir, but Monsieur Mornay had taken his stand where he could command both entrances to the room. She scorned to cry aloud for assistance, nor would she risk his interference by trying to pass him. He read her easily. She made no motion to leave or speak to him, but stood against the wall of the fireplace, her muscles rigid and tense with fear and her eyes regarding him with all the calmness she could command.
“Madame,” he said, solemnly, looking out at her from under his dark brows, “before God, I mean you no harm!” He said it as though it were a sacrament. “In half an hour or less I shall be gone from this room, from your life forever. But you must hear what I have to say.” He paused. “No, no, madame. It is not that which you suppose – you need have no fear of me. It is not that – I swear it!”
Mistress Barbara moved uneasily.
“I pray that you will be seated, madame. No? As you please. What I have to say is not short. Shall I begin?”
“’Twere sooner over,” she said, hoarsely.
He bowed politely. “I will endeavor to be brief. Many years ago, your great-grandfather went to Florida with the expedition of Jean Ribault. Perhaps you have been told of the massacre by the Spanish and how the Seigneur de Bresac escaped to France? Merci! You also doubtless know his and your grandfather’s great hatred of the Spanish people as the result of this massacre? Eh bien. Your grandfather told his three daughters – one of whom was your mother – that if one of them married a Spaniard he would refuse her a part of his fortune and deny her as a child of his – ”
“I pray you, monsieur – ”
“I crave your patience. Lorance, your mother, married Monsieur Clerke, and Julie, the younger sister, married Sir George Maltby. That is well known. The elder sister was Eloise.” His voice fell, and the name was spoken with all the soft tenderness of the name itself. “Perhaps you do not know, madame, that she, too, was married – ”
“There was a mystery,” she muttered. “I heard – ” Then she stopped.
“Madame heard?” he asked, politely. But she was silent again.
“Eloise was married,” he continued, “while visiting at the château of the Duc de Nemours, near Paris, to Don Luis d’Añasco, who was a Spaniard. Fearing her father’s wrath and disinheritance, this unfortunate woman concealed the facts of this marriage, the record of which was the acknowledgment of the priest who married them and the statements of a nurse and another witness who had accompanied her to Amiens,
