The French boy’s countenance, on the contrary, seemed now to have become lit by a kind of inner fire that was almost like inspiration. Sir Paul heard him speak to himself, in French—a tongue which he knew but imperfectly:—
“He has come! Why not now … why not this moment!… Pardi, why not, my Lord Rockhurst?”
As he muttered the words the Vidame laid his hat and stick deliberately on the bench and rose. Farrant, his discomposure increasing well-nigh to horror, watched him step forward, tossing back his heavy locks, as raven-black as Rockhurst’s own; and in the pallid, fine-cut young face he noted for the first time an odd resemblance to Rockhurst himself.
In the minutes that next followed, while his English friend remained sitting as if spellbound, Enguerrand, the stranger in the land, went through the crisis of his life.
So swiftly did the scene pass that the men in the barge below had but the time to push off once more and swing but a single stroke on the return journey to the humour of the tide.
Rockhurst, walking sedately up the alley, with a sweep of his tall cane to every other step, halted as he saw the young man approach; and into his gaze, which had been somewhat abstractedly fixed upon the fair green of the garden, there flashed a strange look.
Sir Paul Farrant was scarce a man of nice observation, yet he could have sworn that my lord’s eyes had for a second held a gleam of indulgence almost approaching to tenderness, as they had lighted upon the lad.
“Well met, my Lord Viscount!” cried Enguerrand, in a high, excited voice. “Aye—well met!”
If Lord Rockhurst’s glance had been kindly, it was swiftly and marvellously altered. Intolerably mocking now and cold it became, to match the tone of the response:—