It may be doubted whether, after all, Roland de Céligny really regretted exchanging Ares for Aphrodite. He hardly knew himself, as he journeyed with his injured friend by discreet routes back to Finistère and that friend’s home near the sea. His heart was certainly sore at leaving the clash of arms, and he still resented the summary separation from his leader. Yet, to balance the sword half drawn and all too quickly sheathed, were the curls of Mlle de la Vergne, enshrined in the chateau whose tourelles rose, on the third day, from a screen of chestnuts to greet the travellers. What, in that blest abode, would Marthe be doing when they came on her? Involuntarily Roland pictured their meeting as a replica, and saw her again at embroidery in the salon with its Indian hangings. But one always paints these things wrong. The reality was even better. For there was no duenna of a mother with her, merely a rustic groom, when, mounted on a beautiful black thoroughbred, she suddenly trotted round a bend of the road. . . .
“If that is not my little sister!” exclaimed Artamène spurring forward; and Roland, uncovering, pulled up his horse.
In the dappled sunlight, under the chestnuts, brother greeted sister, bending from the saddle. Roland thought he had never seen anything more beautiful. He was near enough to hear the joy and the anxiety in Mlle de la Vergne’s voice, her stream of enquiries. Then Artamène looked back and beckoned.
“Let me present M. le Vicomte de Céligny, whom you have already met, ma s?ur, in a new r?le—that of the trusty garde-malade. Since I cannot dispense with his services he comes to stay with us for a few days.”
The little hand which Marthe, pulling off her gauntlet, surrendered with a smile to his salute, was it not even more shapely, more satin-soft to the lips than when it had dropped the embroidery needle to submit to the same reverential greeting? And she herself, in her long blue habit, her man’s high-crowned buckled hat, seemed even more desirable than in high-waisted white, yellow-sprigged muslin of that afternoon in the salon!
“Tell Séraphin to gallop back and tell Maman,” suggested Artamène.
And so they rode slowly along, Marthe in the middle, and talked of their adventures. The wind blew a fold of the long habit against Roland’s foot. Except on the day when he had joined the Marquis de Kersaint, M. de Céligny had never been so happy in his life—for his rapture on the occasion of the Marquis’s appearance at Kerlidec had been clouded by his grandfather’s hostility. Now there was nothing to stain this perfect joy, and Roland was too deeply enthralled even to envy the solicitous glances which Marthe threw at her brother’s be-slinged left arm.
Sad that out of happiness may spring trouble! If the seeds of Roland’s escapade were not exactly sown during that short ride the ground was at any rate prepared for their reception.
Mme de la Vergne, warned by the herald, was on the perron to greet them. Artamène flung himself off his horse and ran up the steps, and, while the good lady embraced her son, Roland had the bliss of dismounting Mlle de la Vergne—of receiving her for one brief second in his arms as she slipped like a feather from the saddle. Then followed his own reception by Mme de la Vergne, small and fair and so unlike her daughter; and he found himself being thanked—thanked!—for accompanying her son hither.
“Maman,” sang Marthe to the harpsichord that evening, “Maman, d?tes-moi ce qu’on sent quand on aime, Est-ce plaisir, est-ce tourment? Je suis tout le jour dans une peine extrême, Et la nuit je ne sais comment!”
Was she? No! But Roland, that night, could not sleep for exaltation.
Artamène, by his mother’s desire, remained in bed next morning. A surgeon had been summoned to view his arm.
“Come and feed the poultry, Monsieur de Céligny—or are you too proud?” suggested Mlle de la Vergne after breakfast. “We are very rustic here, you must know, for we are short of farm servants.”
Roland, who would have swept a pigsty at her bidding, followed her as to some high festival. The hens who drove clucking round his feet might have been the doves of Venus. And the pigeons did indeed sweep in a cloud over Marthe, and ate out of her hand. Roland feared they pecked too hard.
When Artamène appeared he found them sitting in the lime arbour.
“Is our paladin telling you of his adventures?” he enquired, sitting down beside them.
“I have none to tell,” answered Roland. “It is you, mon cher, with your wound and your sling and your surgeon, who have the beau r?le.”
“And all wasted on a sister!” observed the hero with a grin.
“M. de Céligny has been telling me,” said Marthe, “the strange story about the old lady and the treasure of Mirabel. Do you believe it?”
“I believed it sufficiently to try to get sent after the treasure,” replied her brother. “So, taking a mean advantage of my slumbers, did Roland.”
Marthe turned her brilliant dark eyes from one to the other. Artamène shook his head.
“Our request was not favourably received.”
“O, what a pity!” sighed Mlle de la Vergne.
Flecks of sunlight came through the linden-leaves on to her dark hair, bringing out unsuspected warmth in its ebony, and on to a red stone on her finger.
“There is a ruby necklace there,” said Roland suddenly, his eyes moving from her ringlets to her hand. “And hundreds of louis in pistoles of the time of Louis XIII. So the plan said. Oh, if we could only have gone!”
“And is all that hoard to lie there, then, unused, while the Cause goes short of money?”
“Oh, no!” said both the young men together. “Presently, when M. de Kersaint has got the authority of the Duc de Trélan, wherever he may be, he will send some one after it.”
“Some one—whom?”
“I should think very probably M. de Brencourt,” replied Roland.
“And he must wait—perhaps for weeks and weeks—before he can start?”
“Yes,” said her brother, “unless the Marquis, who, as M. de Céligny will have told you, is a kinsman of M. de Trélan’s, decides to act without his authorisation, which, from what he said, it is quite likely he may do.”
“So that M. de Trélan’s authorisation is not indispensable?”
“No. Only a matter of form, I think. Being an émigré and Mirabel confiscated—he can neither prevent nor forward such an attempt.”
Mlle de la Vergne was silent, pushing at the gravel with a little shoe and looking down at it. “Where is Mirabel, did you say?”
“Quite near Paris, I gather,” replied Artamène.
“I wish,” said Marthe pensively, “that I were in Paris—quite near Mirabel!”
“My dear little sister, what would be the good of that?” asked Artamène, amused.
“I have relatives in Paris,” announced Roland, with sudden and apparent irrelevance, “two old cousins of my father’s—quiet, unsuspected, unsuspicious old gentlemen.”
The little silence which followed this statement was broken by a whirr of wings as one of Marthe’s pigeons alighted on the gravel out............