e returned, "then we must stand together." And with
that she set her mind at ease once more, her mood that morning being
very optimistic.

"Always, I hope, Clotilde," he answered, and his little eyes leered up
out of the dimples of fat in which they were embedded. "I have stood by
you like a true friend in this affair; is it not so?"

"Indeed; do I deny it?" she answered half scornfully.

"As I shall stand by you always when the need arises. You are a little
in my debt concerning Monsieur de Garnache."

"I--I realize it," said she, and she felt again as if the sunshine were
gone from the day, the blitheness from her heart. She was moved to
bid him cease leering at her and to take himself and his wooing to the
devil. But she bethought her that the need for him might not yet
utterly be passed. Not only in the affair of Garnache--in which he stood
implicated as deeply as herself--might she require his loyalty, but also
in the matter of what had befallen yesterday at La Rochette; for despite
Fortunio's assurances that things had gone smoothly, his tale hung none
too convincingly together; and whilst she did not entertain any serious
fear of subsequent trouble, yet it might be well not utterly to banish
the consideration of such a possibility, and to keep the Seneschal her
ally against it. So she told him now, with as much graciousness as she
could command, that she fully realized her debt, and when, encouraged,
he spoke of his reward, she smiled upon him as might a girl smile upon
too impetuous a wooer whose impetuosity she deprecates yet cannot wholly
withstand.

"I am a widow of six months," she reminded him, as she had reminded him
once before. Her widowhood was proving a most convenient refuge. "It is
not for me to listen to a suitor, however my foolish heart may incline.
Come to me in another six months' time."

"And you will wed me then?" he bleated.

By an effort her eyes smiled down upon him, although her face was a
trifle drawn.

"Have I not said that I will listen to no suitor? and what is that but a
suitor's question?"

He caught her hand; he would have fallen on his knees there and then, at
her feet, on the grass still wet with the night's mist, but that he in
time bethought him of how sadly his fine apparel would be the sufferer.

"Yet I shall not sleep, I shall know no rest, no peace until you have
given me an answer. Just an answer is all I ask. I will set a curb upon
my impatience afterwards, and