“But I do not know anything about what you ask of me; I am a gardener and am ignorant of what goes on in the palace.”
“But, Gilbert, I believed you had eyes and owed some return in watchfulness to the house of Taverney, however slight may have been its hospitality.”
“Master Philip,” returned the other in a high hoarse voice, for Philip’s kindness and another unspoken feeling had mollified him: “I do like you; and that is why I tell you that your sister is very ill.”
“Very ill?” ejaculated the gentleman: “why did you not tell me so at the start?” “What is it?” he asked, walking so quickly.
“Nobody knows. She fainted three times in the grounds yesterday and the Dauphiness’s doctor has been to see her, as well as my lord the baron.”
Philip was not listening any farther for his presentiments were realized and his fortitude came to him in face of danger. He left his horse in Gilbert’s charge, and ran to the chapel.
Gilbert put the horse up in the stable and ran into the woods like one of those wild or obscene birds which cannot bear the eye of man.
On entering the ante-chamber Philip missed the flowers of which his sister used to be fond but which irritated her since her indisposition.
As he entered she was musing on a little sofa before mentioned. Her lovely brow surcharged with clouds drooped lowly, and her fine eyes vacillated in their orbits. Her hands were hanging and though the position ought to have filled them with blood they were white as a waxen statue’s.
Philip caught the strange expression and, alarmed as he was, he thought that his sister’s ailment had mental affliction in it.