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"Jack," she said, "I am a little nervous the Emperor is still in the dining-room with a crowd of officers, and he has just sent an aide-de-camp to the Château de Nesville to summon the marquis. It will be most awkward; your uncle and he are not friendly, and the Marquis de Nesville hates the Emperor." "Why did the Emperor send for him?" asked Jack, wondering.
The Château de Nesville was a smouldering mass of fire; the lands could revert to the country; she should never again need them, never again see them, for he would take her to his own land when trouble of war had passed, and there she should forget pain and sorrow and her desolate, loveless childhood; she should only remember that in the Province of Lorraine she had met the man she loved.
When Lorraine had been asleep for an hour, Jack stole from the room and sought the old general who was in command of the park. He found him on the terrace, smoking and watching the woods through his field-glasses. "Monsieur," said Jack, "my ward, Mademoiselle de Nesville, is asleep in her chamber. I must go to the forest yonder and try to find her father's body.
"No I we rode down and trampled a man in the dark; I should think it would have been enough to brain him, but when I galloped back just now he was gone, and I don't know how badly he was hit." "But the fellow that started to smash you with a paving-stone the Marquis de Nesville fired at him, didn't he?" insisted Sir Thorald. "Yes, I think he hit him, but it was a long shot. Lorraine was superb "
But it's rather curious, isn't it, what power one little woman can wield over a man's life, even the life of a man who is as far as possible from being a "woman's man"? Ellaline de Nesville pretty well spoiled my early youth, or would if I hadn't freed myself to take up other interests. She burdens the remainder of my young years by making me, willy nilly, the guardian of her child.
That was all a touch, a glimpse of his face half lit by the lantern swinging; and again she called, softly, "Jack, 'Tiens ta Foy!" And he was gone. The distance to the Château de Nesville was three miles; it might have been three feet for all Jack knew, moving through the forest, swinging his lantern, his eyes on the dim trees towering into the blackness overhead, his mind on Lorraine.
He called a groom and bade him drive to the Château de Nesville with the note. Then he went down to sit with the old vicomte and Madame de Morteyn until it came dinner-time, and the oil-lamps in the gilded salon were lighted, and the candles blazed up on either side of the gilt French clock. After dinner he played chess with his uncle until the old man fell asleep in his chair.
When I get instalments of allowance intended for Ellaline, of course I am to send the money to her, except just enough not to be noticeably penniless. I'm to address her as Mademoiselle Leonie de Nesville, and send letters to Poste Restante, because, while I'm known as Miss Lethbridge, it might seem queer if I posted envelopes directed to a person of my own name.
"Dorrie," said Jack, "Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh think that we all should start for Paris by the early train. They have already sent some of our trunks to Saint-Lys; Mademoiselle de Nesville" he turned with a gesture almost caressing to Lorraine "Mademoiselle de Nesville has generously offered her carriage to help transport the luggage, and she is going to wait until it returns."
That he, being a man, was likely to blame me for extravagance and indifference to benefits received, although aware, when he actually reflected on the subject, that I sinned through ignorance. When I had promised, she informed me that "my mother," Ellaline de Nesville, a distant cousin of Lionel Pendragon's, was engaged to him when they were both very young.
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