They have gone to France, my captain."
Madame Duvarney seemed to stiffen in her chair, for what did
this mean but that I was a spy? and the young lady behind them now
put her handkerchief to her mouth as if to stop a word. To make
light of the charges against myself was the only thing, and yet I
had little heart to do so. There was that between Monsieur Doltaire
and myself--a matter I shall come to by-and-bye--which well might
make me apprehensive.
"My sketch and my gossip with my friends," said I, "can have
little interest in France."
"My faith, the Grande Marquise will find a relish for them," he
said pointedly at me. He, the natural son of King Louis, had played
the part between La Pompadour and myself in the grave matter of
which I spoke. "She loves deciding knotty points of morality," he
added.
"She has had chance and will enough," said I boldly, "but what
point of morality is here?"
"The most vital--to you," he rejoined, flicking his handkerchief a
little, and drawling so that I could have stopped his mouth with my
hand. "Shall a hostage on parole make sketches of a fort and send
them to his friends, who in turn pass them on to a foolish general?"
"When one party to an Article of War brutally breaks his sworn
promise, shall the other be held to his?" I asked quietly.
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