"There!" gibed voices amid a labyrinth of pillars, and mechanically she caught up the candle; fled.
"Here she is!" Coming toward her quickly out of the darkness, the Marquis uttered a glad exclamation. "We have been looking for you everywhere. Did I not say you should not have attempted to return alone? Mon dieu! you must have been lost!"
CHAPTER XXVI
A NEW ARRIVAL
Thrice had the old nurse, Marie, assisting her mistress that night for the banquet, sighed; a number of times striven to hold my lady's eye and attention, but in vain. Only when the adorning process was nearly completed and the nurse knelt with a white slipper, did she, by a distinctly detaining pressure, succeed in arresting, momentarily, the other's bright strained glance.
"Is anything the matter?" My lady's absent tone did not invite confidences.
"My Lady—" the woman hesitated; yet seemed anxious to speak. "I—my Lady," she began again; with sign of encouragement from the Governor's daughter, would have gone on; but the latter, after waiting a moment, abruptly withdrew the silken-shod foot.
"The banquet! It is past the hour!"
An instant she stood, not seeing the other or the expression of disappointment on the woman's countenance; then quickly walked to the door. Nor, as the Governor's daughter moved down the long corridor, with crimson lips set hard, was she cognizant of another face that looked out from one of the many passages of the palace after her—the face of a younger woman whose dark, spying eyes glowed and whose hands closed at sight of the vanishing figure!