Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/188

Rh "We are all in the hands" he began, with half a stammer, but the Marquis cut him short.

"Don't be afraid that your knife is too sharp, man," he said good-humouredly. "Fool, if I must needs hear it twice."

"There is no man more reliable than Malot in such a case. Six months, you say, was his last word?"

"And you?"

"Would add 'with care.

"And not forgetting el Santo?"

"Oh, eternity!"

A subject congenial to the jest, evidently. De la Spina's half-savage mirth followed Hautepierre down into the narrow street.

To note the young Marquis a few hours later, as he entered the playhouse by the Watergate and exchanged elaborate greetings with his friends, none could have guessed; but a rose-water stoicism was the mode, and Hautepierre was too correct to show such originality as a display of natural feeling. By consent, he was neither quite a talker nor quite a listener, but between the two, as an irresponsible commenter, he affected to be consumed by boredom and dropped epigrams that seldom failed to bite a little. Malot and de la Spina might have their say, but it was not for François Vivian, Marquis d'Hautepierre, to reform his whole scheme of life for so trifling an incident as death.

The play was The Catalonian Shepherdess, a forgotten comedy, or only remembered in connection with the appalling holocaust accompanying its production; for on this night, when arcadian sentiments were swaying the rose-water sympathies of the house, and danger, as Hautepierre afterwards plaintively remarked, seemed as remote as real sheep and real shepherdesses, the demoralising cry of "Fire!" suddenly rang out upon a startled