wearing and the air of dignity with which
she wore it, that I stood gasping. I turned coward after all that had
passed between us. This was not the girl I had wooed in the greenwood
by St. Gaultier; nor the pale-faced woman I had lifted to the saddle
a score of times in the journey Paris-wards. The sense of unworthiness
which I had experienced a few minutes before in the crowded antechamber
returned in full force in presence of her grace and beauty, and once
more I stood tongue-tied before her, as I had stood in the lodgings at
Blois. All the later time, all that had passed between us was forgotten.

She, for her part, looked at me wondering at my silence. Her face, which
had grown rosy red at my entrance, turned pale again. Her eyes grew
large with alarm; she began to beat her foot on the floor in a manner I
knew. 'Is anything the matter, sir?' she muttered at last.

'On the contrary, mademoiselle,' I answered hoarsely, looking every way,
and grasping at the first thing I could think of, 'I am just from M. de
Rosny.'

'And he?'

'He has made me Lieutenant-Governor of the Armagnac.'

She curtseyed to me in a wonderful fashion. 'It pleases me to
congratulate you, sir,' she said, in a voice between laughing and
crying. 'It is not more than equal to your deserts.'

I tried to thank her becomingly, feeling at the same time more foolish
than I had ever felt in my life; for I knew that this was neither what I
had come to tell nor she to hear. Yet I could not muster up courage nor
find words to go farther, and stood by the table in a state of miserable
discomposure.

'Is that all, sir?' she said at last, losing patience.

Certainly it was now or never, and I knew it. I made the effort. 'No,
mademoiselle,' I said in a low voice. 'Far from it. But I do not see
here the lady to whom I came to address myself, and whom I have seen
a hundred times in far other garb than yours, wet and weary and
dishevelled, in danger and in flight. Her I have served and loved; and
for her I have lived. I have had no thought for months that has not been
hers, nor care save for her. I and all that I have by the king's bounty
are hers, and I came to lay them at her feet. But I do not see her
here.'

'No, sir?' she answered in a whisper, with her face averted.

'No, mademoiselle.'

With a sudden brightness and quickness which set my heart beating she
turned, and looked at me. 'Indeed!' she said. 'I am sorry for that. It
is a pity your lov