I was glad that, at this moment, the Seigneur Duvarney entered,
for I could feel the air now growing colder about Madame his wife.
He, at least, was a good friend; but as I glanced at him, I saw his
face was troubled and his manner distant. He looked at Monsieur
Doltaire a moment steadily, stooped to his wife's hand, and then
offered me his own without a word; which done, he went to where
his daughter stood. She kissed him, and, as she did so, whispered
something in his ear, to which he nodded assent. I knew afterwards
that she had asked him to keep me to dinner with them.
Presently turning to Monsieur Doltaire, he said inquiringly,
"You have a squad of men outside my house, Doltaire?"
Doltaire nodded in a languid way, and answered, "An escort--for
Captain Moray--to the citadel."
I knew now, as he had said, that I was in the trap; that he had
begun the long sport which came near to giving me the white
shroud of death, as it turned white the hair upon my head ere
I was thirty-two. Do I not know, the indignities, the miseries
I suffered, I owed mostly to him, and that at the last he
nearly robbed England of her greatest pride, the taking of New
France?--For chance sometimes lets humble men like me balance
the scales of fate; and I was humble enough in rank, if in
spirit always something above my place.
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