De Proballe looked after him as he walked away, and laughed softly to himself. “What a cauldron of trouble does this plaguey love brew for us fools of mortals!” he muttered. “Here are the whole affairs of a city tumbled topsy-turvy, hither-thither, because Gabrielle has a pretty face and yonder sour-visaged loon is sick to kiss it. Aye, aye, and blood will flow too, and men’s pates will be cracked and their throats slit before his heart ceases to ache, or I am no reader of signs; and ’twill be luck more than judgment that will carry one safe through the hurly-burly.”
Meanwhile Gabrielle had carried her storm of wrath to the Duchess and had poured out her story with half-incoherent vehemence until her friend, whose sudden faintness had been invented by de Proballe as a lure to get Gabrielle away, was like to be overcome in truth.
But even a girl’s wrath, however righteous, cannot last for ever; and thus in time Gabrielle’s began to abate its hurricane force, and gradually her furious indignation hardened into a stern determination to secure Gerard’s freedom and to thwart and punish those who had so maltreated him.
“You have been so vehement, child, I could scarce understand you,” said the Duchess. “I know how it eases trouble to give it free vent; and so I would not interrupt to get you to clear the tangled skeins for me. But now let us see what we can do.”
“I am nearly mad when I think of it,” cried Gabrielle. “If this shameful deed is not prevented, I believe I shall go mad indeed. If aught of harm comes to him, I will spend my life in avenging him.”
“But now tell me, who is he?”
“I do not know nor do I care. For me he is the best, the bravest, and the noblest man that ever lived.”
The Duchess smiled, but did not let Gabrielle see the smile. She loved the girl dearly, and her heart was still young enough to sympathize even with such a rhapsody. But the contrast between this whirlwind mood and Gabrielle’s former calm and unmoved indifference to all men, and especially to all lovers, was too startling not to appeal to her.
“He should have proclaimed himself, Gabrielle, and then all this trouble might have been spared.” This was good common sense, but love and youth are contemptuous of common sense. To Gabrielle it savoured of distrust of Gerard.
“He did rightly. He could not do wrong, Duchess,” she cried. “His motive was nobleness itself. We drove him into assuming my cousin’s part; he did it for my sake and mine only; and he could not make himself known in his own name until he had justified himself in my eyes. You would not have had him do otherwise. I would not, not for a thousand worlds.”