. It cannot
be long. Go. I am repaid. She has never risked as much for you! Lock the
door without!"

And she pushed him into the street, shut the door, and fell in a white
heap fainting behind it, as John d'Albret turned the key outside.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

SAVED BY SULKS

When the so-called uncle of Valentine la Nina, Mariana the Jesuit, found
that even his acute ears could distinguish no sound within the darkened
parlour of his niece, he did what he had often done before. He opened
the door with the skill of an evil-doer, and peered through the crack.
The evening sun struck on a spray of scattered blooms which Valentine
had thrown down in her haste--grenadine flowers, red as blood--upon a
broidery frame, the needle stuck transversely, an open book of devotion,
across which the shadows of the window bars slowly passed, following, as
on a dial of illuminated capitals, the swift westering of the sun. But
he heard no sound save the flick-flick of the leaves of the Judas tree
against the window, in the light airs from the Canigou, already damp
with the early mist of the foot-hills.

The Jesuit listened, carefully opened the door a little more widely, and
listened again, holding his hand to his lips. Still only the stirring
air and the leaves that tapped. Mariana drew a long breath and stepped
within. The room was empty.

Then he brought his hand hard down on his thigh, and turned as if to cry
a hasty order. He stopped, however, before the words found vent.

"She has freed him--fled with him, the jade," he murmured; "she was
playing to me also--what a woman--ah, what a woman!"

Then admiration took and held possession of him--a kind of connoisseur's
envy in the presence of a masterpiece of guile. The great Jesuit felt
himself beaten at his own weapons.

"Used for sanctified ends," he murmured, "what a power she would be!"
And again, "What a woman!"

But the order did not leave his lips. He felt that it were better to
leave the matter as it was. If only he could find Valentine la Nina, no
one would know of her part in the prisoner's escape. It could be put
down to the carelessness of the watchers. The principal familiars were
at their work deep in the caves of the Inquisition. The eyes in the
prisoner's cell were painted eyes only--their effect merely moral. None
had seen John d'Albret go into the summer parlour of Valentine. None had
heard her interview, stormy as it was, with her uncle. They had other
thi