rquis. He was
retiring for want of reinforcements, but would still hold his ground if
his Majesty ordered it.'

'I regret it infinitely, but what is to be done, Monsieur?' said the
other, with a slight shrug of the shoulders.

'At the hazard of spoiling his Majesty's appetite, I 'd like to see him
at once, Monsieur de Breze,' said the officer boldly.

The polished courtier turned a look of half astonishment, half rebuke,
on the soldier, and tripped up the stairs without a word.

'I am _de service_, sir,' whispered Gerald to the young officer. 'Could
I possibly be of any use to you?'

'I am afraid not,' replied the other courteously. 'I have a message to
be delivered to his Majesty's own ear, and the answer to which I was to
carry to my general. What I have just mentioned to M. de Breze was not
of the importance of that with which I am charged.'

'And will it be too late to-morrow?'

'To-morrow! I ought to have been half-way back toward Paris already.
You don't know that a battle is raging there, and fifty thousand men are
engaged in deadly conflict.'

'The king _must_ hear of it,' said Gerald, as he mounted the stairs.

Very different was the scene in the splendid salons from that which
presented itself below. Groups of richly attired ladies and followers
of the court were conversing in all the easy gaiety their pleasant lives
suggested. Of the rumours from the capital they made matter of jest and
raillery; they ridiculed the absurd pretensions of the popular leaders,
and treated the rising as something too contemptible for grave remark.
As Gerald drew nigh, he saw, or fancied he saw, a sort of coldness in
the manner of those around. The conversation changed from its tone of
light flippancy to one of more guarded and more commonplace meaning. It
was no longer doubtful to him that the story of his late altercation
had got abroad, with, not impossibly, very exaggerated accounts of the
opinions he professed. Indeed, the remark of an old Marechal du Palais
caught his ear as he passed, while the sidelong glances of the hearers
told that it was intended for himself--'It is too bad to find the
sentiments of the Breton Club from the lips of a Garde du Corps.'

It was all that Gerald could do to restrain the impulse that urged him
to confront the speaker, and ask him directly if the words were applied
to _him_, The decorous etiquette of the spot, the rigid observance of
all that respect that surrounds the vicinity of