‘Who ... who are you, Monsieur?" gasped de Roubec.
During their swift exchange the lady had emerged from the carriage. She was standing now upon the lowest of the folding steps that had been let down outside its doors. Roger saw at a glance that she was tallish with a mature but slim figure. As she drew herself up the additional height lent her by the step, coupled with her high headdress, gave her the appearance of towering over him. Next second he caught the angry flash of bright blue eyes through the slits in her mask, as she exclaimed impetuously:
"Monsieur! How dare you interfere in my affairs! And do you not know that it is a criminal offence to draw a sword in..."
She never finished her sentence, breaking it off abruptly as a quick, warning cry of "Madame I pray you have a care!" came in French, but with a strong foreign accent, from her companion who was still inside the vehicle.
But the lady on the step had already said too much to preserve her incognito. On several occasions in the past Roger had seen that determined chin, slightly protruding lower lip, and delicate but imperial nose. Her uncompleted sentence, pronounced with such icy dignity, had given him the clue to her identity and he knew that she had meant to end it with the words "in my presence".
Within a second his stupefaction was overcome by a wave of glowing elation. Where his wits had failed him it seemed that the goddess Fortune had dealt him a hand of her highest cards, and that he had now only to play them properly to be received at Court on the most favourable terms.
By preventing the packet from being given to the scoundrelly de Roubec, he had every reason to believe that he had rendered a most valuable service to no less a person than Marie Antoinette, Queen of France.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MASKED LADIES
ROGER still held the packet high above his head spitted on the point of his sword, so he was in no situation to make a graceful obeisance; but he could, and did, sweep off his hat with his free hand, lower his sword to the ground and go down on one knee before the Queen.
"I see you know me, Monsieur," she said coldly. "That makes your conduct even more inexcusable."
"I did not recognize Your Majesty until you spoke," he replied in quick protest.
"Then I excuse your having drawn your sword, but not your interference." She spoke more calmly now. "Rise, Monsieur, and give that packet to the gentleman to whom I was handing it, instantly."
Roger stood up, removed the packet from the point of the sword, and sheathed his blade; but he made no movement to obey her last command. Instead, he said: "At the risk of incurring an even further degree of Your Majesty's displeasure I was about to add that had I recognized you when first I came up I would still have acted as I did."
"What mean you by this fresh impertinence, Monsieur?" Her voice was high and sharp again.
It was not the first time that Roger had been called upon to talk with royalty. In the preceding year he had held several long conversations with King Gustavus III of Sweden, and others of a far more intimate character with that bold, cultured, licentious woman Catherine the Great of Russia; so he knew very well that it was regarded as a most scandalous breach of etiquette to ask any sovereign a direct question. But his experience had taught him that, although crowned heads showed themselves to their subjects only as beings moving in an almost god-like aura of pomp and splendour, they were, behind it all, just as human as other people; and that provided they were treated with the respect which was their due, they responded much more readily when talked to naturally than with slavish obsequiousness. So with a wave of his hand towards de Roubec, who, still sitting his horse, was staring at him with an expression of puzzled anxiety, he said:
"Madame, I pray you pardon my temerity, but what do you know of this man? I'd take a big wager that you know little or nothing."
To put such a question to the Queen of France was a bold gamble, but it came off. She was so taken by surprise that she overlooked the impertinence and replied with her usual impetuosity: "Then you would win your wager, Monsieur; for I have never seen him before. I know only that he was recommended as a trustworthy courier to carry a letter of some importance for me."
"Then I beg Your Majesty to excuse me from obeying your last command," cried Roger, swiftly following up his advantage. "I know the fellow for a rogue. He is unfitted to be entrusted with the scrapings of a poor-box, let alone a weighty despatch from your own august hand. Though, when I first came on the scene, I thought 'twas a package of jewels that you were handing him."
"Why so?" asked the Queen, in fresh astonishment.
"Madame, in your own interests I crave your indulgence to relate an episode from my past, which is highly relevant to this present matter."
"Do so, Monsieur. But be brief."
Roger bowed. "I thank Your Majesty, and in advance swear to the truth of what I am about to say. I am of noble birth upon my mother's side, but when I was a lad I decided to go out into the world and pick up a living as best I could, rather than be sent to sea. When I ran away from home my purse was lined with near twenty . . ." He had been about to say guineas, but swiftly substituted the word "Louis” and continued: "But various expenses had reduced that sum to no more than a handful of silver by the time I entered the city of Le Havre."
At the naming of the city de Roubec started so violently that he unintentionally rowelled his horse. Throwing up its head the mettlesome bay started to stamp its hoofs in a restless dance, and for the next few moments its rider had all he could do to control it.
Roger had been watching for the effect of his words and now pointed an accusing finger at him, exclaiming: "See, Madame. He has recognized me at last, though 'tis small wonder that he took so long to do so after all these years; or that I, after passing him a mile back in the forest this afternoon, took several minutes to identify the ill-favoured countenance of this gaudily clad popinjay, for those of the out-at-elbows rogue who cheated me so long ago."
"Keep to your story, Monsieur," interjected the Queen.
Again Roger bowed. "On arriving in Le Havre, Your Majesty, I went to a poor inn on the quays. There, this Chevalier de Roubec scraped acquaintance with me. He accounted for the shoddiness of his attire by telling me that he had had his pocket picked of a considerable sum, and that the landlord of the inn had seized his wardrobe as security for the payment of his reckoning; but that he was the son of a Marquis who had great estates in Languedoc and a position of importance near the person of the King, so he would soon be in funds again. But that is by the way. Suffice it that, being but a boy and entirely lacking in experience of the ways of such rogues, I believed him and thought him my friend."
"He lies!" broke in de Roubec hotly. He had now quieted his horse, and leaning forward across its neck was glaring down with mingled fear and anger at Roger. "I give Your Majesty my word that 'tis all a tissue of falsehoods. He has mistaken me for some other."
"Be silent!" Marie Antoinette rebuked the interruption sharply, and signed to Roger to continue.
Obediently he took up his tale. "I have told you, Madame, that I was by then near out of funds myself, but I had an asset which I counted on to protect me from the pinch of poverty for a year at least. Before I left home a dear friend—one in fact whom I looked on as closer than a sister—knowing my intention, forced upon me a collection of gold trinkets. They were old-fashioned things and she had better jewels; but they were of considerable value and would, I think, have fetched some four hundred louis. This villain took advantage of my trust in him to persuade me to let him help me dispose of them. Then, Madame, he disappeared with the entire collection, leaving me, a boy of fifteen and a half, near destitute in a strange city where I knew not a soul."