It was a fine evening and as he had often done before, he went and leaned out of the window. He looked again at the garden house where he had spied Andrea’s movements, and the desire seized him to wander for the last time in the grounds once hallowed by her presence.
As he recovered from the smart of the failure to his expectation, his ideas became sharper and more precise.
In other times when he had climbed down into the young lady’s garden by a rope, there was danger because the baron lived there and Nicole was out and about, if only for the meetings with her soldier lover.
“Let me for the last time trace her footsteps in the sandroof, the paths,” he said: “The adored steps of my bride.”
He spoke the word half aloud, with a strange pleasure.
He had one merit, he was quick to execute a plan once formed.
He went down stairs on tiptoe and swung himself out of the back window whence he could slide down by the espalier into the rear garden. He went up to the door to listen, when he heard a faint sound which made him recoil. He believed that he had called up another soul, and he fell on his knees as the door opened and disclosed Andrea.
She uttered a cry as he had done, but as she no doubt expected someone she was not afraid.
“Who is there?” she called out.
“Forgive me,” said Gilbert, with his face turned to the ground.