She paused, and added with quaint wistfulness: 'Think you, Colle, that I shall look handsome?'
'As lovely as a picture, my dear one,' said Nicolle with enthusiasm. 'As exquisite as a lily; fit only to be the bride of a King.'
Jacqueline gave a quick sigh of satisfaction, after which she allowed Colle to give her a kiss and to bid her a final 'good night.'
And even as she fell gradually into the delicious and dreamless sleep of youth, her lips murmured softly: 'I wonder!'
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT BECAME OF THE LILIES
I
Gilles had spent four days at the hostelry of 'Les Trois Rois,' and here he would have liked to remain indefinitely and to continue the sentimental romance so happily begun beneath the casement-windows of the Archiepiscopal Palace. With the light-heartedness peculiar to most soldiers of fortune, he had during those four days succeeded in putting his rôle out of his mind. Though he had not yet caught sight of Madame's face at her window, he quite thought that he would do so in time, and already he had received more than one indication that his singing was not unwelcome. The casement had been deliberately thrown open when he had scaled the courtyard wall, and had resumed his song immediately beneath the window which he had ascertained belonged to Madame's private apartment. He had felt, even though he did not actually see, that some one was listening to him from up there, for once he had perceived a shadow upon the casement curtain, and once a hand, small and delicate, had rested upon the window-sill. Gilles would have continued this wooing—aye! perhaps have brought it to a happy conclusion, he thought—without being forced to assume another personality than his own: a thing which became more and more abhorrent to Messire Gilles' temper, now that the time for starting the masquerade in earnest was drawing nigh.
'We could make ourselves very happy here, honest Jehan,' he had said to the faithful companion of his many adventures. 'Waited on by that silent and zealous youth, who of a truth looks like the very ghost of silence and discretion. With judicious economy, the money which a gracious Queen hath placed in our hands would last us a year. It seems a pity to fritter it all away in a few weeks by playing a rôle which is detestable and unworthy.'
'B-b-b-but——' stammered old Jehan.