The Argosy, Vol. 83 No. 1 — page 141: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE STAR OF ADVENTURE. to be some sort of a banquet that night at which the leaders of the dawning revolu- tion would swear allegiance to this new hope of French sovereignty. ‘And I shall tell them,” said the duke, - “that my secretary has arrived, that I have tested him, that he has saved my life, saved the Star of Valois.” Knowlton cast a somewhat desperate glance at Mile. de Valliéres. Those dark lashes of hers fell swiftly over her eyes. There was the suspicion of a smile linger- ing on her lips. So she had still been laughing at him! He glanced at the Count du Barry, but the count looked merely grave. The decisions of men are often as deli- cately balanced as a chemist’s scales; more delicately, even, for what scales are re- sponsive to so light a thing as the down- ward glance of a girl? So the thought was resolving itself in Knowlton’s mind. He had reflected a lot during that slow, strange voyage he had made up from the Azores to the mouth of the Loire. He had come to the ultimate, unshakable deter- mination to have nothing to do with a rev- olution against republican France. Even while he was bathing himself up- stairs, and then while Salvatore was cut- ting his hair and shaving him, he had repeated the determination in the words he was to use when he revealed his de- cision to Jean. Now, as his eyes came back to the girl’s delicate face, as he saw the color and the texture of it, and as he had some glimpse of the nature back of it, he found that he had no words at all, that that carefully meditated determination of his was dis- appearing like a breath on a window-pane. So much for the proposals of man when Fate steps in! From far and wide, that night, the purring motors brought their masters to the Chateau Lenoir.” Nantes, the nearest railway station, was not far away, but few of the visitors came by train. The gath- ering was no affair to be publicly adver- tised. There were to be sixty guests at the banquet to which the Duke of Angouléme had referred—the leaders of the Royalist and Nationalist parties from all over France. The Church and the Army, the Academies and the University, all were represented. The duke had invited Chan to be of the number, but he had declined. There was going to be plenty of time, later on, for him to get acquainted with the leaders of the movement. There may have been a thousand re- tainers connected with the chateau and its farms, woods, meadows, and game-pre- serves; its gardens and hot-houses, stables and kennels, its garages and work-shops. These retainers, on such a night as this, constituted an army of sentinels. Most of them had been born on the place, or had come to it from other great families devoted to the House of Valois. They were needed. The agents of the Political Branch of the Third Republic’s Secret Service were ever on the alert. In spite of the unusual assemblage there brooded over the old chateau an atmos- phere of becalmed mystery. ‘So it seemed to Chan. i During most of the afternoon he slept. The luxury of such a sleep he had not known since leaving his home in America. Word had been brought him from Jean, the Duke of Angouléme, to make himself at home. He had dined alone. He wrote letters. He read. The night deepened. But all the time his thoughts, in spite of himself, kept reverting to the Princess Blanche. Finally he made his way down-stairs and out into the garden back of the cha- teau—a garden he had seen from the breakfast-room. The place was even more attractive now than it had been when the sun was shin- ing. There was no moon, but the night was clear, and the stars filled the air with a blue radiance. Chan hadn’t gone very far before he saw two figures seated on a marble bench at the end of one of the paths—two Gomicbooks 131 - (C@)