Jude, "that the Princess de Poix desires me
to find and conduct to her Madame the Baroness de la Roche Vernay."

So saying, he carried off Cyrene again, like some black piratical
cruiser, and she reluctantly accompanied him, looking back regretfully
over her shoulder.

Lecour could not understand the eternal use of the formal orders of the
Princess. He watched the two in a vexed stupor until they disappeared.
Then he recalled the inanity and exacting requests of the great lady,
and guessed how her reader was able to so boldly play his annoying
trick.

Just then Grancey laid his hand on Germain's shoulder. There was so much
friendship in the face of the golden-haired Life Guard that Lecour at
once raised the question uppermost in his mind.

"Baron," said he, "tell me, who is Madame de la Roche Vernay?"

Grancey's eyes twinkled intelligently.

"It is an affair, then? I can keep secrets."

"An affair only on my unfortunate side," Germain admitted gloomily.

"As on that of many another. Your Cyrene is the bearer of a very great
name: she is a Montmorency."

"A Montmorency!"

"Yes; she is a widow, you see."

"Never."

"While an orphan. Her father, the Vicomte Luc de Montmorency, who was a
madman of a spendthrift, ended up in two bankruptcies, and was banished
from Court. Cyrene was brought up in a mouldy old chateau near St. Ouen.
When only thirteen her hand was sought by an ambitious financier,
Trochu, for his son, Baron la Roche Vernay, who was then with his
regiment in Dominica. Money was necessary to the Vicomte, and, in short,
Mademoiselle was sold for two million livres, and the marriage
celebrated by proxy, as both the fathers were impatient to finish the
bargain. It appeared by the mails that the young man died of fever two
days after.

"She wears no mourning," said Germain.

"Her father forbade it, and he brought her back with her dowry at once
to his own roof, away from the Trochus."

"But why is such a beautiful woman not married again?"

"Do you not know that at the Court nobody except the bald and toothless
marries, except for fortune. There are plenty of lovers, but no
husbands. Because she is poor she is passed about in the family,
sometimes as lady of honour to the Princess, sometimes to the Marechale
de Noailles, her grand-aunt."

Germain's feelings were trebly disturbed by the history of the
child-widow. He made an effort to speak to her once more by inviting her
to the tennis-court,