"
"I shall be all right after a quadrille," she answered, giving
a hand to a young man who came up at that moment.
Mme de Langeais waltzed that evening with a sort of excitement
and transport which redoubled Montriveau's lowering looks. He
stood in front of the line of spectators, who were amusing
themselves by looking on. Every time that _she_ came past him, his
eyes darted down upon her eddying face; he might have been a
tiger with the prey in his grasp. The waltz came to an end, Mme
de Langeais went back to her place beside the Countess, and
Montriveau never took his eyes off her, talking all the while
with a stranger.
"One of the things that struck me most on the journey," he was
saying (and the Duchess listened with all her ears), "was the
remark which the man makes at Westminster when you are shown the
axe with which a man in a mask cut off Charles the First's head,
so they tell you. The King made it first of all to some
inquisitive person, and they repeat it still in memory of him."
"What does the man say?" asked Mme de Serizy.
"'Do not touch the axe!'" replied Montriveau, and there was
menace in the sound of his voice.
"Really, my Lord Marquis," said Mme de Langeais, "you tell
this old story that everybody knows if they have been to London,
and look at my neck in such a melodramatic way that you seem to
me to have an axe in your hand."
The Duchess was in a cold sweat, but nevertheless she laughed as
she spoke the last words.
"But circumstances give the story a quite new application,"
returned he.
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