Lorraine, A Romance

It was not yet dawn. Jack, sleeping with his head on his elbow, shivered in his sleep, gasped, woke, and sat up in bed. There was a quiet footfall by his bed, the scrape of a spur, then silence.

"Is that you, Mr. Grahame?" he asked.

"Yes; I didn't mean to wake you. I'm off. I was going to leave a letter to thank you and Madame de Morteyn--"

"Are you dressed? What time is it?"

"Four o'clock--twenty minutes after. It's a shame to rouse you, my dear fellow."

"Oh, that's all right," said Jack. "Will you strike a light--there are candles on my dresser. Ah, that's better."

He sat blinking at Grahame, who, booted and spurred and buttoned to the chin, looked at him quizzically.

"You were not going off without your coffee, were you?" asked Jack. "Nonsense!--wait." He pulled a bell-rope dangling over his head. "Now that means coffee and hot rolls in twenty minutes."

When Jack had bathed and shaved, operations he executed with great rapidity, the coffee was brought, and he and Grahame fell to by candle-light.

"I thought you were afoot?" said Jack, glancing at the older man's spurs.

"I'm going to hunt up a horse; I'm tired of this eternal tramping," replied Grahame. "Hello, is this package for me?"

"Yes, there's a cold chicken and some things, and a flask to keep you until you find your Hohenzollern Regiment again."

Grahame rose and held out his hand. "Good-by. You've been very kind, Marche. Will you say, for me, all that should be said to Madame de Morteyn? Good-by once more, my dear fellow. Don't forget me--I shall never forget you!"

"Wait," said Jack; "you are going off without a safe-conduct."

"Don't need it; there's not a French soldier in Morteyn."

"Gone?" stammered Jack--"the Emperor, General Frossard, the army--"

"Every mother's son of them, and I must hurry--"

Their hands met again in a cordial grasp, then Grahame slipped noiselessly into the hallway, and Jack turned to finish dressing by the light of his clustered candles.

As he stood before the quaintly wrought mirror, fussing with studs and buttons, he thought with a shudder of the scene of the night before, the marquis and his murderous frenzy, the impassive Emperor, the frantic man hurled to the polished floor, stunned, white-cheeked, with hands slowly relaxing and fingers uncurling from the glittering revolver.

Lorraine's father! And he had laid hands on him and had flung him senseless at the feet of the Man of December! He could scarcely button his collar, his fingers trembled so. Perhaps he had killed the Marquis de Nesville. Sick at heart, he finished dressing, buttoned his coat, flung a cap on his head, and stole out into the darkness.