One of my people announced M. de Perrot, and I bade them
admit him. In a twinkling he came up, pale with heat, and
covered with dust, his eyes almost starting from his head and his
cheeks trembling with agitation. Almost before the door was
shut, he cried out that we were undone.
I was willing to divert myself with him for a time, and I
pretended to know nothing. "What?" I said, rising. "Has the
King met with an accident?"
"Worse! worse!" he cried, waving his hat with a gesture of
despair. "My son--you saw my son yesterday?"
"Yes," I said.
"He overheard us!"
"Not us," I said drily. "You. But what then, M. de Perrot? You
are master in your own house."
"But he is not in my house," he wailed. "He has gone! Fled!
Decamped! I had words with him this morning, you understand."
"About your niece?"
M. de Perrot's face took a delicate shade of red, and he nodded;
he could not speak. He seemed for an instant in danger of some
kind of fit. Then he found his voice again. "The fool prated of
love! Of love!" he said with such a look--like that of a dying
fowl--that I could have laughed aloud.
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