As he walked slowly along, charmed with the beauty of the scene around him, and smiling now and again to think that fortune should have placed him in the midst of such unaccustomed splendors, he suddenly heard the sounds of a lute near him, fingered in tentative accord, and an instant later he recognized St. Aulaire's voice.
"'Twas written for you, Madame, and 'tis called 'Le Pays du Tendre,'" he said, still fingering the strings. "I would wander in the land with you, Madame." Suddenly he begins to sing softly, and, in the silence and perfume of the summer night, his hushed voice sounded like a caress:
Land of the madrigal and ode,
Of rainbow air and cloudless weather,
Tell me what ferny, elfin road
Will lead my eager footsteps thither.
Tricked out with gems shall I go hither?
Or in a carriage à la mode,
Land of the madrigal and ode,
Of rainbow air and cloudless weather?
Or in the garb by Love bestow'd?
With roses crown'd and sprigs of heather,
With mandolin and dart enbow'd
Shall Cupid and I go together—
Land of the madrigal and ode,
Of rainbow air and cloudless weather?
As the last tinkling notes of the lute died away, Calvert was about to go, but he was suddenly startled by hearing a faint scream. Turning quickly and noiselessly in the direction from which the sound seemed to have come, he found himself in an instant in a thick and beautiful bosquet. A double row of ilex-trees, inside of which ran a colonnade of white marble, completely encircled and shut in a cleared space, in the centre of which bubbled a fountain. Into this secluded spot the moon, high in the heavens, shone with unclouded radiance, so that he saw, as clearly as though 'twere noonday, Madame de St. André standing at the edge of the basin, her lips white and parted in fear, one hand pressed against her throat, the other held roughly in the grasp of Monsieur de St. Aulaire, who knelt before her, his lute fallen at his side. The rose which she had worn in her hair had escaped from its diamond loop and lay upon the ground; the delicate gaze d'or of her dress was torn and crushed.
For an instant Calvert stood in the shadow of one of the Grecian columns and looked at the scene before him in sick amazement. So it was to Adrienne that St. Aulaire was singing love-songs in this isolated spot at midnight! As he hesitated, Monsieur de St. Aulaire rose from his knees.
"You did not always treat me with such contempt, Madame," he said, with a mocking laugh, "and by God, I have no mind to stand it now," and, putting one arm around her quivering shoulders and crushing in his the hand with which she would have pushed him from her, he leaned lightly over to kiss her.
As he did so, Calvert stepped quietly forward ('twas wonderful how, though he always seemed to move slowly, he was ever in the right place at the right time) and, seizing St. Aulaire by the collar, hurled him backward with such force that he fell heavily against one of the gleaming marble columns and lay, for an instant, stunned and motionless. Feeling herself thus violently released from St. Aulaire's embrace, Adrienne sprang back, uttering a low cry and gazing in surprise at Calvert. The ease with which he had flung off the larger and heavier man aroused her wonder as well as her admiration, for she never imagined Calvert's slender, boyish figure to be possessed of so much brute strength, and, since the days of Hercules and Omphale, brute strength in man has ever appealed to woman. Before either of them could speak, St. Aulaire struggled to his feet and, wrenching his dress sword from its sheath, staggered toward Calvert, thrusting wildly and ineffectually at him.
"Put up your sword, my lord," says Calvert, contemptuously, knocking up the silver blade with his own, which he had drawn. "We cannot fight with these toys. Should you wish to pursue this affair with swords or pistols, if you prefer the English mode, you know where to find me. And now, begone, sir!"