"It is a dragon!" faltered Daphne. "Can't you see it now? It's coming towards us! And oh, I'm afraid the Count has sent it—like that snake—to—to kill me!"
A dragon was a danger which the Fairy, with all her precautions, had somehow omitted to foresee, and for a time she exhibited about as much calmness and self-possession as a hen at a fox-raid. "Heaven preserve us!" she wailed. "If we were but safe at Clairdelune! What can we do?"
"Hide," said Daphne, trembling. "Quick! In the undergrowth!"
"It would spy us out from above," groaned the Fairy. "No, we must run for the Pavilion and shelter there."
Daphne seized her hand and they ran together, but they had not gone far before the Court Godmother suddenly collapsed. "My old legs fail me!" she said, "I can go no further! Run on, child, while you can!"
"And leave you!" cried Daphne. "No, I shan't do that! But oh, can't you do anything to save us! Think!"
The Fairy rose to her feet, shaking all over. "I knew a spell once," she mumbled. "I never tried it—but if I could only remember it now, it might—But I can't—I'm too old—too old! That all my plans should have come to this!"
The dragon was forging along at a tremendous pace. It would soon be near enough to single out its prey—and still the old Fairy stood there, racking her memory in vain.
Close upon noon Mirliflor had thrown away his hoe and torn off his apron for ever. In a few minutes more he would be with his love—and yet his heart was oppressed by a certain fear that had been haunting him all the morning. The Fairy would re-transform him—but could he be sure of the effect on Daphne? What if he lost, as Mirliflor, the love that Giroflé had won? He was so absorbed in these disquieting reflections, as he alternately hastened and checked his pace down the broad walks, that he scarcely noticed a faint outcry, and sounds as though firearms were being discharged, which seemed to come from the Palace behind him. Perhaps, he thought, a revolt had broken out, but, if so, it did not concern him. His Daphne was in no danger in those grounds beyond the wall. He passed through the gate, and presently came to the astrolabe, and then the stone bench, both hallowed now by the sweetest associations. And yet it might be that those associations would be his last with her! It was almost a relief, on reaching the yew walk, to find it deserted. He went to the Pavilion, and there he elicited from Daphne's elderly duenna, who was rather hard of hearing, that, as her young mistress was certainly not indoors, he would probably find her in the grounds.
He searched all the yew walks in vain, and then, with a new and growing uneasiness, turned towards the avenue, but he had got no farther than a small pool in a marble basin when he heard a strange and dreadful noise above him. He glanced upwards, and saw the bulk of a huge dragon sailing high above the tree-tops. It was making swiftly for the valley; one of its claws held a pendent form in fluttering drapery, and he knew too well that the captive could only be she for whom he had been searching. He had saved her once from the malice of her enemies—this time he was powerless! He raved and cursed in impotent rage and despair while a sudden gust swept the pool and sent it surging over the brim, and a slender cypress that stood hard by rustled and shivered as though in terror. And as he stood there, he suddenly saw the old Court Chamberlain before him, holding in one hand his silken cap and in the other a sword and belt.