"We were about to visit the Black Seigneur!"
"Ah!" A look flashed from his Excellency to his daughter; her glance failed to meet it.
Yet paler, she turned over-hurriedly to the Marquis. "What is that air they are playing now?" His response she heard not, was only conscious that, across the board, the eyes of her father still scrutinized; studied!
At length, however, the evening wore away; a signal from his Excellency, and of one accord they rose and crossed to the star-illumined cloister adjoining. There at the entrance, my lady, who toward the last had listened with an air of distraction, hardly concealed, to her noble suitor's graceful speeches, held back, and, as the others went in, quickly effected her escape and hastened to her own apartments.
"At last!" She threw back her arms; breathed deeper. "Ah, mon père, you are hard—unyielding as the iron doors and bars of your dungeons!" She pressed her hand to her forehead. "And I can do nothing—nothing!" she repeated; stood for a moment motionless and then mechanically moved toward the bell-rope at the other end of the chamber. But the hand she started to raise was arrested; through the slightly opened door to the adjoining apartment, she heard voices; words that caused her involuntarily to listen.
"I have made up my mind to tell her ladyship, Nanette!" The old nurse was speaking, in tones that betrayed excitement and anxiety. "It is, to say the least, embarrassing for me—your coming here! You, the daughter of Pierre Laroche, who emigrated to the English Isles! Who has always shown disloyalty for the monarchy at home!"
My lady, surprised, drew nearer; caught the answer, which came in tones, deep and strong.
"At least, aunt, you are frank!"
"I must be! Under ordinary circumstances, I should be glad; of course, the child of my dead sister ought to be welcome."
"So I thought," dryly, "when I stopped off a few days ago to see you, on my way to Paris."